


Entirely Unprofessional

by jinkandtherebels



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 1960s, Fusion, M/M, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - Freeform, spy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinkandtherebels/pseuds/jinkandtherebels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin is a secret agent. His ex Arthur is also a secret agent, and hates him. Gwen is a mechanic whose father has been kidnapped by a wealthy arms dealer. Together they might just save the world - if they don’t end up killing each other first. 1960s AU, also known as the “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” fusion.</p><p>(Written for the 2016 Aftercamlann Big Bang!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Whoo! After much wailing and gnashing of teeth--another ACBB finished! This one was lots of fun, even if the spy genre was a complete mystery to me at first, and I hope you all enjoy it!
> 
> Some thank-yous before we go on! Thank you, wonderful ACBB mods, for making me look forward to this fest every year. Thank you to my glorious beta story_monger and fantastic Britpicker tari_sue for saving me from myself and making this fic 1000x better, you guys rock. And thank you, thank you to hyraethwrites, Artist of Awesome--I've had so much fun collaborating with you and flailing at each other over Tumblr messenger, your art makes me smile a lot and I can't wait to see what you create next!

.

**_Chapter One_ **

.

The briefing is longer than it should be. His handler speaks in clipped, cool tones; he delivers what he considers to be the pertinent facts with a slideshow in the background containing scans of relevant files, photographs, and the like. The current slide has only one picture: an uncharacteristically austere portrait of a young man in uniform: skinny, dark-haired, with sharp cheekbones and large ears.

“Merlin Emrys,” his handler says. He wonders if he’s imagining the faint note of disdain in the measured words. Probably not. “Left home at sixteen to pursue an exceedingly brief military career. He failed to distinguish himself in service, except in his remarkable ability to end up in places he shouldn’t have. Discharged for failing to follow orders.”

Somehow that doesn’t surprise Arthur in the slightest.

“His skill at infiltration brought him to the attention of our organization, and we acquired him shortly after his time in the military ended. For three years he was one of our agents—impertinent and disrespectful, but he did get results. On occasion.” The words sound like teeth being pulled.

A small man in the back of the room changes the slides. The image on the projector screen flips to that of a heavily redacted file, their agency’s equivalent of an open warrant, and Arthur knows what’s coming next. He reminds himself to keep his posture loose and relaxed.

“Two years ago Emrys defected. The reasons for his doing so are not widely known, nor do they matter. He disappeared from our radar, only to reappear a year later in the midst of an art heist in Vienna.” Now his handler isn’t even bothering to hide the fact that he’s unimpressed. “We at first suspected that he had put his skills of deception to use in the black market, but were later able to tie him to an American organization that functions similarly, on the surface at least, to our own. Emrys remains an active agent under their jurisdiction and protection.”

“I know all of this already,” Arthur cuts in, unable to stop himself even at the irritated look that crosses his handler’s face. “There wasn’t a single agent here who didn’t know about it the second it happened. Why is Emrys suddenly relevant?”

His handler’s mouth tightens.

“Because he has resurfaced again,” he says. “And we have it on good authority that his current mission involves the Smithson debacle.”

Arthur’s grip on the armrests tightens, briefly, before he remembers himself and loosens his fingers.

“Specifically?”

“The daughter,” his handler replies. “Emrys’ handlers believe they have located Guinevere Smithson. It follows that his objective is to extract her from her current location without drawing any undue attention.”

So it also follows, then, that Arthur’s mission is to intercept them. He stands.

“I’ll be on a plane within the hour,” he says.

His handler nods. “I’ll see that you’re given the coordinates before then.”

The dismissal is clear, so Arthur turns to leave, but his handler’s voice stops him.

“I trust Emrys’ status as your former comrade will not impede your judgment. Nor your willingness to do whatever needs to be done.”

Arthur understands more than his handler thinks. He knows that he’s being given a chance here, a chance to redeem himself for the one mistake that has never been forgiven. He turns around.

“I understand, Father.”

.

.

Gwen will readily admit that she’s been a little paranoid lately. But she’s also aware it’s for a good reason, so when the sharp _click-clack_ of understated yet expensive shoes sounds in her peripheral hearing while she’s trying to fix the engine of a 1944 Aston Martin, she’s already prepared—rolling out from under the chassis, getting to her feet and brandishing her wrench at the intruder before she can think twice about it.

“Stay back,” she warns. The man puts up his hands and takes an obliging step backwards. Gwen spares a moment to congratulate herself on excellent instincts (or cynicism—same difference, really, nowadays): No one in a suit that well tailored would willingly set foot in the grease pit that Gwen calls home. Not unless he had some business that involved more than just car repairs.

“Who are you?” Gwen demands, brandishing the wrench again for good measure. The stranger starts to lower his hands and she glares. “And don’t try anything. I have excellent aim.”

The man in the suit doesn’t smile, but there’s a glimmer in his eyes that almost makes Gwen think that he wants to.

“Just someone who wants to help,” he answers. _An American, then_ , Gwen thinks. There’s a hint of another accent there but she can’t quite place it.

Even she has to admit that he doesn’t look like much of a threat—he doesn’t really look like much of anything, to be honest. Despite the fact that he’s got to be at least a full head taller than she is, he also looks like he wouldn’t weigh eight stone soaking wet. He probably has a few years on Gwen, if that much, and is sporting a mop of black hair and bright blue eyes that still look very much like they want to laugh.

Honestly, the only remarkable thing about him would have to be the cheekbones, and Gwen isn’t quite desperate enough to go lusting after men who wander into her garage fairly reeking of suspicious intent.

“Help,” she repeats, and lets her tone tell the man exactly what she thinks of _that_ explanation. “Who says I need your help?”

The man’s gaze flickers down to his watch before returning to her face. “Honestly, I think if I told you all the specifics you’d never sleep again.” He looks pointedly at the wrench she’s still clutching in a white-knuckled grip. “And it looks like you’re plenty paranoid already without my help. Or do you always threaten your customers with whatever tool happens to be handy?”

“When they wear shoes like that? Fancy suits?” Gwen lifts her chin. “Yes. I’ve been at this long enough to know that people with that sort of money have people to deal with people like me so that people like _them_ don’t need to.”

The man blinks—and then, to her surprise, he cringes.

“God, I don’t look that bad, do I?” he asks with a hint of plaintiveness. “The suits sort of come with the job, but if they make me look like that much of an arse I’ll switch to casual wear, dress code be damned.” There it is again, the faintest trace of an accent that disappears as quickly as Gwen manages to pick up on it.

The man looks down at his watch again. Gwen is starting to second-guess her own instincts—the man standing in front of her is one of the least subtle people she’s met in some time; how dangerous could he actually be?

“Look,” he says, “I’m going to skip all the cryptic BS the people in my line of work usually open with, if that’s all right with you. You’re Guinevere Smithson, right?”

Gwen stiffens, tightening her grip on the wrench again. She wants very badly to say something arch and cool like, _who wants to know_ **?** But the fact is, even going by a false name does little to help when you’re a woman in a man’s field. There aren’t too many female mechanics drifting about. Gwen steels herself.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “Now tell me why you’re asking.”

“Your father’s attracted a lot of attention.”

 _Of course_. He sounds almost apologetic. It doesn’t stop Gwen’s voice from shaking.

“He was never a traitor. Never. That was a filthy lie.”

“That’s not—” Yet another glance down at the watch. “We think you might be able to help us locate him. Your father.”

Ice water in her veins. “I don’t know where he is. He disappeared; that’s what I told the police over and over—”

“I’m not accusing you of anything!” the man says quickly. “Trust me, if that were the case then they would’ve sent someone marginally more intimidating than me.”

 _That wouldn’t be too hard_ , some mad part of her wants to say, but fortunately the man in the suit speaks again before Gwen’s mouth can run away with her.

“I get that this is all very weird and you’re probably off-balance and freaked out right now, and I wish I had the time to sit you down and spell everything out in a way that made this all seem any less sketchy than it does, but I don’t. I just need an answer. Will you help my people find your father?”

“Even if I had some clue how to reach him,” Gwen says tightly, “which I don’t, by the way—how on earth am I supposed to trust ‘your people’ with that information? I don’t know who you’re working for. You won’t even tell me what your name is.”

“Emrys,” he replies instantly, at least having the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “My name is Emrys.”

 _I doubt that very much_. She bites her tongue again and tries to sound calm. “Well, Emrys, you seem to have some idea of how cloak-and-dagger all this is. Then you should understand why until I get something more concrete than just ‘people’, I’m not comfortable agreeing to anything you suggest.”

“Fair enough,” Emrys says. “And I don’t blame you, and honestly I wouldn’t’ve bothered you at all, except—well, I was followed here.”

The wrench slips from Gwen’s fingers. It makes an ugly clanging sound on the concrete floor.

“What?” she croaks.

“Followed,” Emrys repeats, apologetic again. He’s got to be the most diminutive secret agent she’s ever seen, not that Gwen has seen all that many outside of Bond films. “Not one of my finer moments, but I was bugged sometime before I got here. This was supposed to be a recon thing, at least for now, but I found the device on my car about two minutes before I walked in here. I figured that gave us about ten minutes to talk uninterrupted. It’s now been—” He checks his watch yet again, which is somewhat less annoying now that Gwen knows there’s a practical reason behind it. “Six minutes. So—”

He stops talking suddenly, whirling around to look out the window. Gwen follows his gaze, but she hears the problem before she sees it: the low rumble of a slow-moving car’s engine, and nothing but darkness where the flares of headlights would normally be.

“Early,” Emrys is saying under his breath. “Bloody early, should’ve known—” He turns back to Gwen and speaks firmly, rapidly, his accent slipping off his words until they acquire a lilt rather like Gwen’s own.

“Merlin Emrys,” he says. “All right? My name is Merlin Emrys, and I’m with the American government, and I’ll tell you my birthday and blood type in the car if you come with me right now. Because I can tell you from experience, the man in that car out there is vastly more unpleasant to deal with than I am.”

There’s a hint of desperation in those too-readable eyes that tells Gwen, somewhere down deep, that he’s not lying.

The car outside is getting closer to the window. Another few seconds and they’ll be seen.

Faced with two equally unappealing options, Gwen sets her jaw and makes her choice.

“What is it that you drive?” she asks.

.

The answer is, almost unequivocally, junk. Gwen takes one look at the car and immediately nudges Emrys out of the way when he makes for the driver’s side door.

“I’ve worked on this model before,” she says firmly, “and not to offend, but I wouldn’t entrust my life to anyone else’s driving anyway, and certainly not in this death trap.”

It’s hard to tell in the darkness—most of the streetlights in this area went out a long time ago and nobody’s been willing to cough up money to replace them—but Gwen thinks Emrys looks offended at her appraisal of his Jowett. Excuse her for not being tactful when he’s got her running for her life after knowing her for all of seven minutes.

The other car has just disappeared around the front of the building when Emrys says quietly, “Floor it, please.”

Gwen doesn’t need to be told twice.

Emrys is thrown against the passenger side window as she slams on the gas and the little heap of tin goes hurtling down the narrow streets; she hears the sudden squeal of tires behind them and knows, her heart leaping up to jangle around in her throat, that the other car has turned around and started following them at the same speed.

“Try to stay as steady as you can,” Emrys tells her, cranking the window down.

“I can do that,” Gwen says, trying to ignore her sweaty palms and pounding heartbeat. “And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try and shoot his tires out,” Emrys replies, as easily as he’d say _I’m popping out for a pint of milk, you need anything?_

She doesn’t really have time to focus on that, however, as the next thing she knows Emrys is leaning halfway out the window and aiming a handgun—where the _hell_ had he been hiding that this whole time—at the car behind them, and Gwen can’t see more than that because she has to pull her eyes back to the road to keep from veering into a building and killing them both before the person in the other car has the chance to.

Too late, as it turns out, because a sharp turn is rearing up in front of them almost before she has time to process it. Gwen barely manages to shout a warning to Emrys before they’re veering sideways, nearly nicking an old brick building in the process.

Emrys, fortunately, manages to withdraw in time to avoid being scraped off on said building. He doesn’t seem to appreciate this turn of events, however: “Are you _trying_ to take my head off? I’m trying to keep us from getting caught here!”

“Then stop complaining and do it!” Gwen snaps back, adrenaline pushing her beyond the possibility of politeness.

Emrys nods, and in one lithe movement he’s halfway out the window again—but this time there’s not more than a second’s hesitation before the _blam_ of a gunshot cracks the night open, followed by a second. Gwen hears rather than sees the other car screeching and swerving to an ungraceful halt.

She lets out a breath. “Is that it, then?”

“Should be,” says Emrys, flopping back into his seat. “Not much else he can do unless he decides to get out and—”

He stops, leaning closer to the rearview mirror before turning around in his seat to look out the back window.

“Oh, you have got to be _joking_.”

“What?” Gwen demands. “What is it?” Even as she says the words she’s looking in the rearview mirror herself, squinting in the dark, trying to see.

Her mouth falls open. “Is he—he’s not—”

“He is,” Emrys says, and Gwen can’t tell whether he sounds bitter or impressed. “He is running after the car on foot, because he’s an impossibly stubborn prat, and he’s damn well going to catch us too so _step on it, please_.”

.

For the record, Merlin does not actually hate his job.

Well. To be fair, there are some parts of it that he hates. Just a little. Like the suits—Merlin really hates the suits—and the lack of any discernible health benefits, and the ever-present possibility that he’s going to get shot.

(It’s not _that_ much of a possibility, to be honest—despite what most people think, if you’re a secret agent worth any salt at all you don’t end up in a position to get shot at in the first place. Ideally, you’re in and out of a situation and halfway home before the targets even realize they’ve been had. But, you know, these things do happen. Sometimes. More frequently than Merlin would like.)

There’s also the slightly tiresome fact that he always has to go by ‘Emrys’ because ‘Merlin’ is, in the words of his handler, “so blatantly ridiculous that any mark with half a brain in their head would realize that it’s a pseudonym.” Never mind that it’s _not_ , but whatever.

But on the other side of things, there’s travel! Adventure! Excitement! Going to exotic new places, meeting interesting people (typically before having them arrested, but still), getting to _become_ an interesting person for days or weeks at a time. There are definitely perks to this job, even if Merlin didn’t exactly have what one might call a choice when he took it. But he digresses.

Merlin doesn’t actually hate his job. But right now he really, _really_ hates his life.

Guinevere at least has the courtesy to listen when Merlin’s trying to get them both out of here in one piece, so Merlin’s car is going at top speed. Which admittedly isn’t much, because his people are surprisingly stingy when it comes to forking over cash for vehicles that _don’t_ look like they’re about to keel over in the middle of the street.

He’d like to think the intrinsic lack of speed on the poor thing is why the man in the rearview mirror is rapidly catching up. On foot. To a moving car. But Merlin is very much acquainted with the man in question, and with that acquaintance comes the unfortunate awareness that no, he really is just that good.

Good, obnoxious; take your pick, really.

“Emrys?”

Guinevere’s voice, and understandably frazzled too. Merlin drags his gaze away from the rapidly approaching figure in the shadows and turns to her.

“What is it?”

“Couldn’t you just—” One hand briefly vacates the wheel to wave at Merlin’s firearm. “Maybe just a warning shot, or something?”

Merlin blinks. “He’s not going to _kill_ us,” he says, realizing too late that she has no reason to think that’s not the obvious outcome of this little chase. “And I’d really rather not shoot him at all.”

(He’s not even certain he could do it if he wanted to. Sure, he’s been trained to be a good shot, well-rounded when it comes to weapons and whatnot, but again: the nature of the job demands a certain level of danger _avoidance_. They’re not American cowboys swaggering straight into a firefight; they’re meant to operate with finesse, with subtlety. It’s sort of difficult to be subtle if you’re waving a gun all over the place.

Merlin’s never actually shot anybody and he really doesn't want to start tonight.)

He squints at the road ahead. “If you can get us to the nearest building with roof access, I can take it from there. We’ll be able to lose him. Just trust me, all right?”

Guinevere takes her eyes from the road long enough to shoot him a suspicious look, which is fair, because she doesn’t have much reason to trust anyone right now.

“Hang on,” is all she says.

Merlin barely has time to comply before the car swerves again, violently, and so hard Merlin thinks _shit, we’re going to flip_ and _I guess this is how it ends_. Not the most glamorous death for an ostensibly secret agent, but maybe it’s no more than he deserves.

And then they clear the corner and the car rights itself, and Gwen keeps right on speeding like nothing unusual is happening.

Trying to ignore the fact that his heart’s pounding a tattoo into his chest, Merlin cranes his neck again and tries to see out the back window. The shadowed figure is no longer in sight.

Guinevere, apparently thinking along similar lines, asks, “Did we lose him?”

“I sincerely doubt it,” Merlin admits. “He’ll be back. The second you think you’ve won, he’ll be back.” Bloody prat always has to have the last word. “Don’t slow down. We’re almost there.”

He tells her when to turn and she listens, which again is a nice change from what he’s used to dealing with, and gives Merlin a little bit of encouragement that maybe this whole night won’t end in utter disaster. Which is usually the feeling that precedes utter disaster, now that he’s thinking about it.

They pull up in front of the building and get out. Merlin crouches down to pick the lock because these old buildings actually have decent structure and trying to kick the door down would just end in embarrassment for everyone involved.

“Emrys?” Guinevere interrupts after a moment, her voice strained enough that Merlin immediately guesses what the problem is. He doesn’t turn around.

“Five more seconds,” he says through gritted teeth.

“He is literally _right there_.”

“Three more— _there_.” The lock clicks open; Merlin stands up and grabs Guinevere’s elbow, tugging her into the open doorway ahead of him in one fluid motion. “Just get to the roof and try your best to ignore the scary man chasing after us. He hates it when people ignore him.”

He can see Guinevere’s mouth struggling to open around that question, but she’s a practical sort of person when it comes down to it, and forgoes being nosy in favor of bolting up the stairs. Merlin takes the extra second to lock the door again because even a moment’s obstruction is worth the time in situations like this.

Merlin’s not much for praying, generally speaking. All his attempts tend to devolve into irritable mental grumbling halfway through, and that’s what he’s doing now, swearing vengeance on all and sundry vague persons if they get up to this rooftop and the zipline isn’t set up, as it ought to be assuming Merlin isn’t the only person in this entire bloody organization who knows how to do his job.

The shattering of glass comes from behind them, followed by heavy footfall: their pursuer apparently bypassed the door entirely and decided to enter by window. Now that’s just _cheating_.

The second they reach the roof Merlin is casting around for something to barricade the door with; he finds a heavy bar that will do the trick, if only temporarily, and then he and Guinevere run for the very edge of the roof where—ah. There. He yanks off the tarp covering their means of escape.

“Why is there a zipline here?” Guinevere asks, her disbelief evident even in a terrified whisper, but Merlin doesn’t really have time to explain his handler’s perpetual tired assumption that every given thing is going to go wrong. _‘Simple extraction’ my arse_.

He kneels down, feeling around until he finds the mechanism that releases the zipline’s cord. It shoots out into the night; the maths experts have done their homework because if he squints, Merlin can just make out the sharp end of the zip embedding itself into a blurry dark space on the other side of the river. A truck—their ride out, assuming they can just get there.

He passes Guinevere the first of the smaller cords. Her mouth falls open briefly, a soft _O_ of surprise forming as her brain probably screeches that she’s taken up with a suicidal idiot, but the moment passes as she tightens her jaw.

“It could be worse,” she says. “I half-expected you to have a parachute under that suit.”

Merlin is really starting to like her.

Guinevere clambers up on the edge of the rooftop, her breath hitching as something heavy begins to slam against the door behind them—and then she’s gone, an indistinct shape sliding across the sky through empty air. Merlin climbs up onto the roof’s edge and slips his own cord over the zipline, half a heartbeat away from following her down when the door finally crashes open.

He knows better than to look back, but Merlin’s an idiot so he looks back anyway—sees blue eyes flashing angrily in the darkness.

It’s been a while, but Merlin still knows that expression down to the most minute of details.

 _Sorry, Arthur_.

The words are inane and clichéd and far too late, so it’s probably for the best they get stuck in his throat.

Arthur makes a move toward him, but Merlin turns away and jumps off the roof, lets the rush of wind in his ears and the spike of adrenaline drown out the regret.

He cuts the line the second his feet hit the ground.

.

They hole up in a nondescript little motel right across the border, not glamorous enough to attract attention but not shitty enough to make it look like they’re trying not to attract attention. (There’s a trick to the art of hideout choosing. Merlin’s gotten pretty good at it over the years.) He gets them separate rooms, because he figures at this point Guinevere is in deep enough that there’d be no point to her running away.

They’re connecting rooms, because Merlin’s also been taught never to leave things to chance if he can avoid it.

He does his habitual sweep of the room (for bugs, listening devices, pipe bombs, that sort of thing—paranoia is a job requirement in his line of work) while Guinevere pads about next door, possibly getting ready for bed, probably pacing and trying to pinpoint the exact moment when her life spun so spectacularly out of control. Merlin empathizes. He’s been there. When the footfalls finally stop, indicating she’s either gone to sleep or just passed out, Merlin picks up the hotel phone and dials a number.

There’s a good five to ten minutes in between the initial dialing and Merlin actually being connected to the person he wants to talk to. A lot of vague answering messages and equally vague passcodes are exchanged, once or twice he has to hang up and call back exactly six seconds later. It’s a pain in the arse, but like his handler is always telling him, security—and subtlety (this part is usually punctuated with what Merlin thinks is an unnecessarily pointed eyebrow raise)—is paramount.

Finally, there’s a _click_ on the line and his handler picks up. “Yes?”

“Line’s secure,” Merlin says, also unnecessarily, because he wouldn’t be talking at all if it weren’t. “I picked up our houseguest.”

“And how is she?”

Most handlers probably wouldn’t ask that question, Merlin thinks. His old ones certainly never did. It’s part of why he likes Gaius so much, trusts him in a way that's hard to come by in this job.

“Good,” he answers. “I mean—rattled, obviously, who wouldn't be, but she’s holding up really well. She insisted on driving the escape vehicle.”

At this point in their relationship, Merlin doesn’t need the benefit of eyesight to be able to sense Gaius’s eyebrow going up. “I sincerely hope you’re joking.”

“I’ll explain it in the mission report. It’ll all sound very tame, I promise.” He grins. Gaius sighs on the other end.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that that was the extent of your excitement for the evening?” When Merlin hesitates, Gaius sighs again. “I may be retired from the more excitable portions of our work, Merlin, but I am not dead yet. Out with it.”

Merlin’s grin slides off his face. Without meaning to, he remembers Arthur’s eyes in the dark. Furious.

“We were followed,” he says, keeping his tone neutral. “I got sloppy, and another agent tracked me.”

Gaius’s voice is abruptly alert. “Were you identified?”

Merlin braces himself. “It was my old partner. From where—from where I used to be. We recognized each other straight off.”

In the silence that follows Merlin wonders, uncomfortably, just how much his handler knows—or has guessed—about the factors that contributed to Merlin leaving his old organization. They might not be in any file, even a redacted one, but Gaius has an uncanny way of reading people.

“I see,” Gaius says at last. “That is a problem.”

“He doesn’t know where we are. And we weren’t followed here, I made sure of that.”

“I’m more concerned with what he might tell his superiors,” is the grim reply. “Before, we could have claimed plausible deniability when Guinevere went missing. Now they can definitively tie her disappearance to us.”

Merlin cringes. “I’m sorry. I should have been more thorough.”

“There’s nothing to be done about it now,” Gaius tells him, not unkindly. “I’ll make some calls. There might still be a way to mitigate the damage.”

It’s his handler’s turn to hesitate. “Merlin,” he says, “you’re certain you’re all right?”

 _Uncanny_. Merlin clears his throat. “’Course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Whatever your reasons for leaving your previous employer, it is always…difficult, to find yourself faced with the people who believe you’ve betrayed them. I know.”

He closes his eyes. Gaius can’t see him. “It won’t interfere with my work. You have my word on that.”

He can tell Gaius isn’t satisfied with the answer—which is fair enough, because it’s bullshit and they both know it—but he doesn’t push. They say their brief goodbyes and the next thing Merlin hears is a dial tone, and a cool female voice apologizing for the dropped connection.

He hangs up the phone and sits down on the hotel bed. Leans over, puts his head in his hands and breathes slowly until enough time has passed that he feels almost normal again.

.

Gwen does a lot of pacing back and forth across the shoebox of a motel room while she waits. There isn’t much to see; the walls are a violent shade of yellow, but the room seems clean and it has the necessities. She’s stayed in worse places.

At the very least, this one does have a phone.

The timing has to be ludicrously specific, since she can’t chance Emrys hearing said phone ring from the next room. The door between them has a lock, but Gwen imagines that won’t do her much good against a government agent. So she waits, and she paces, keeping an eye on the big clock on the wall.

When the hour, minute and even second hands are all in place, she stops pacing, sits down on the bed and dials a number. She wonders as it rings whether the phone she’s calling will have been destroyed by tomorrow. It seems likely.

There’s a tiny click, letting her know the call has been picked up, but no greeting. She hadn’t expected any.

Gwen takes a breath and tries to keep her voice down. “It’s as you said,” she says. “They came. There were some…complications, but I don’t think it’ll interfere in the long run.”

The voice on the other end asks her a question. Gwen swallows hard.

“Of course I am. You shouldn’t need to ask.”

The line goes dead after that. Gwen returns the phone to its cradle with a sigh, turns off the light, and resolves to at least try for some sleep.

She doubts she’s going to get very much of it over the coming days.

.


	2. Chapter 2

.

**_Chapter Two_ **

.

“Gaius,” Merlin says politely. “Why are we in a loo?”

Don’t get him wrong, it’s a fancy loo—octagonal, green tiles in the walls, separate stalls and everything—but it’s definitely not the typical location for briefings. When Merlin’s not on an extended undercover mission that requires periodic but extremely discreet check-ins—which he’s not—Gaius is normally fine with taking his mission reports _in his office_. Over disgusting sludgy tea and occasionally biscuits.

There are no biscuits currently in sight. Also, he’s having a meeting in a loo. It’s eight in the morning and this day is already going downhill.

“Patience is a virtue,” Gaius replies in the kind of tone that doesn’t make Merlin feel particularly patient. He’s about to say so when Gaius’s gaze shifts to the door.

“He’s here,” he says. “Do try to keep quiet, Merlin.”

Right, yes, that’s not making him feel any less like a five-year-old either, but Merlin doesn’t have time to retort before the door opens and—

Oh, he’s dead.

Merlin’s hand is going for his belt knife out of habit even though he knows it’s useless; he’s dead and this is the end of it. Without even looking Gaius catches his wrist, and Merlin would send him the look of greatest betrayal if he weren’t bloody terrified to take his eyes off of Uther Pendragon.

His former employer. And reigning champion of the list of people who want Merlin very, very dead.

Uther closes the door behind him. Merlin swears the temperature plummets several degrees.

“Uther,” Gaius greets him, perfectly cordial.

“Gaius.” Uther gives him a curt nod. He doesn’t deign to look in Merlin’s direction, for which Merlin is embarrassingly thankful. Particularly since Uther is now squarely between Merlin and the only viable exit. _Shit, I’m dead, I’m dead_.

He must have fucked up worse than he’d thought, and now Gaius has no choice but to hand him over to Uther to keep things even. He’s dead. He’ll _want_ to be dead long before Uther is finished with him.

The two men don’t shake hands. They’re standing well outside of each other’s personal space, which at least keeps Uther out of _Merlin’s_ personal space. Gaius clears his throat.

“I was given to believe we had one more guest on the agenda,” he says.

“He’ll be arriving shortly,” Uther replies. “There was some last-minute business in Vienna that needed attending to.”

“Ah. Of course.”

The iciest of all awkward silences ensues. Merlin finds himself sweating despite the temperature drop that had accompanied Uther’s entrance, but he doesn’t even want to risk shuffling his feet lest it bring the man’s wrath crashing down on his head. He hasn’t been handed over for an agonizing demise yet, after all. Maybe there’s more to this.

Gaius and Uther haven’t taken their eyes off one another since the latter entered the room. Not for the first time, Merlin wonders what the hell their history is—if anybody actually knows what it is. Gaius has never spoken a bad word about Uther, at least not openly, but the relationship between their respective organizations has never been what you might call friendly. Even by spy agency standards.

Finally, Uther steps aside to allow the door to open. “He’s arrived.”

“You won’t like this,” Gaius murmurs, and there’s just enough apology there to make Merlin _really nervous_ before the door opens again.

Arthur’s nod is nearly as stiff as his father’s.

“Emrys,” he says.

Merlin’s hand clenches into a fist before he realizes what he’s doing. His mouth has gone dry; for what feels like the first time in his life, he doesn’t have any words.

Gaius clears his throat again and just like that, Merlin’s window for reply has closed. “You two are already familiar with each other, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t waste any further time on introductions. Undoubtedly you’re both wondering why you’ve been called here.”

“There is a plot,” Uther says bluntly. “A renowned nuclear physicist has gone missing, as you both already know. We have reason to believe that he has been kidnapped, and that his captors plan to use his expertise to build a more effective weapon.”

“I’m…guessing these are not good people,” Merlin says, tearing his gaze away from Arthur. Who is pointedly not looking at him.

Uther’s expression is withering, but thankfully it’s Gaius who steps in and answers. “That would be an understatement. They would sell the weapon to the highest bidder with no regard for how it might be used. It is imperative that we find Dr. Smithson before it gets to that point. To that end, we have taken Guinevere Smithson—the doctor’s only daughter—into our care.

“Admittedly our respective organizations have not always had the most…cordial of relationships,” Gaius continues. “But given the urgency and the potentially devastating consequences of this case, we felt it was time to set old grievances aside and work together.”

“ _What_?” Merlin blurts.

The look on Arthur’s face is coolly unimpressed, which recalls the days early in Merlin’s career when he was fairly sure he was going to assassinate the director’s son before he was ever allowed on a mission. Gaius is giving him The Eyebrow. None of this distracts Merlin from the certainty that he’s the only one having the appropriate reaction to this bit of news.

“Effective immediately,” Uther says, “the two of you will be spearheading this mission. You’ll be sent the details over the appropriate channels, of course.” His gaze rakes them both over the coals. Merlin did not miss that look. “You worked together once. Learn to do so again. Our organization will not have on its head the destruction that will follow if you fail.”

With another nod to Gaius, Uther turns and walks out of the loo. Gaius himself lingers only a few seconds longer.

“I apologize for springing this on you both,” he says, although Arthur still looks impassive enough that this might as well be just another Tuesday. “And for the overabundance of secrecy. This was something of a last-minute decision, you understand.”

His eyes linger on Merlin and with a sick swoop of realization, Merlin does understand. This was all because he didn’t realize soon enough that he was being followed, that Arthur was on his tail. If his old organization hadn’t been able to physically place him in a room with Guinevere Smithson…but they had, because he’d been careless and stupid, and now Arthur’s people have that to hold over Gaius’s head.

“Joint mission” his arse. They were blackmailed into this, and it’s his own damn fault.

“Well,” Gaius says, breaking into Merlin’s guilty reverie. “I will leave you to get, ah…reacquainted.”

And on that deeply uncomfortable note, he leaves as well.

And then Merlin’s in a room alone with Arthur for the first time in two years.

“You’ve grown careless,” Arthur says after a minute. His hands are clasped behind his back. “It shouldn’t have been as easy to follow you as it was.”

Merlin bristles, but keeps his voice mild. “Still didn’t help you in the end, did it? You didn’t catch me and you didn’t get Dr. Smithson’s daughter.”

“Big talk for someone whose failure cost his organization a valuable bargaining chip. You’ve put Gaius in an awkward position.”

Merlin forces himself to smile. It’s all teeth, he knows, and not terribly friendly, but it’s the best he can do. “I’m used to being in awkward positions. You should know that by now.”

That was a stupid thing to say—he knows it as soon as he says it—but it does get Arthur to turn and look at him, finally, even if the ice in his eyes is devastatingly solid.

“That accent is terrible,” he says flatly. “No real American would believe it.”

Merlin’s been told his accent is flawless, actually, good enough that he can blend into most northern-ish regions of the States without anyone looking at him sideways. “Bitter that I can ditch received pronunciation more easily than you can, Arthur? Thought jealousy was beneath you.”

“Maybe you can shed your skin more easily,” Arthur replies. “But I’m not particularly ashamed of it. At least my default accent doesn’t hide who I am.”

It’s harder than he thought it would be to suppress a glare. Merlin’s been using Brooklyn as his default for a while now, finding that it’s more likely to make people believe he’s quite wealthy and not terribly bright. It’s still not perfect, tends to wobble a bit when he’s under more than the usual amount of pressure, but it’s done an all right job for him so far.

Generally speaking, he tends to use American accents when he wants a mark to think he’s brash, and a posh English accent—which he perfected by listening to Arthur, actually—when he wants to sound important; there’s virtually no reason to go back to his native one, not when nobody outside of the UK seems to have much of an opinion concerning Welsh accents anyway. But he’s not _ashamed_ of it.

And nobody thinks he is, Merlin reminds himself. Or if they do, it doesn’t matter anyway. Arthur is just trying to get under his skin and succeeding, as usual. It’s almost like they haven’t spent any time apart at all.

“Look,” Merlin says. “We’re going to be working together now, apparently, and it’s going to be a lot less painful for us both if we can at least pretend to be on decent terms.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard for you, then,” Arthur says, deceptively light the way Merlin remembers dreading during their fights. “You’re excellent at pretending to get on with people, after all.”

Merlin refuses to flinch. “That is my job, yes.”

“Ah, yes. Merlin Emrys, always performing above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Better than still being under daddy’s thumb,” Merlin snaps.

He immediately regrets it, and not just because Arthur turns and decks him. But he doesn’t really have time to dissect _why_ he feels guilty either, since he’s busy hitting back and all.

To their credit, Gaius and Uther don’t actually have to resort to dragging them apart like brawling schoolboys, but it’s a near thing. Merlin can feel a cut over his eye that trickles blood sluggishly down the side of his face; for his part he’s managed to bloody Arthur’s nose. Probably for the best neither of them had more than thirty seconds or so to go at each other—he remembers counting the number of weapons Arthur had stashed in his clothing one morning, and getting up to an impressive seventeen before Arthur had caught him and he’d lost count.

(Merlin averages fifteen, himself. He always insisted the extra bulk looks more natural on Arthur than on Merlin, who is admittedly built like a spaghetti noodle with ears.)

Everyone sort of shuffles along awkwardly after that as they go their separate ways (except for Uther, of course—if he’s ever let anything as petty as human emotion tarnish his perfect dignity, Merlin will swallow something improbable).

“Well,” Gaius sighs as they make their way to the underground, “I suppose that went about as well as could be expected.”

.

“Arthur.”

He stops short, straightening his posture even though he doesn’t need it.

His father is less than pleased, any idiot could tell that much—or maybe they couldn’t. Arthur finds he forgets, sometimes, that other people didn’t grow up with Uther Pendragon for a parent. Forgets that not everyone spent their childhood constantly scanning for signs of something going wrong, or something _about_ to go wrong, something that would wake up the icy rage his father is capable of.

They say paranoia is a prerequisite for surviving in this line of work. Arthur likes to think of himself as having gotten a crash course at an early age.

“That was childish,” Uther says. “And unprofessional. I trust we will not be subjected to any more displays in the future.”

For an absurd moment Arthur thinks his father is using the royal ‘we’, before remembering Gaius. “It won’t happen again.”

Uther continues as if Arthur hasn’t spoken. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to think you could keep your composure in this instance,” he says, and coming out of anyone else’s mouth it might sound understanding. Arthur’s mouth tightens.

 _You gave me no warning_ , he wants to say, but his father is angry enough as it is. The appearance of control is more vital than control itself, sometimes, and Arthur has failed to keep up appearances—in front of another agency representative, at that. The fact that Emrys lost his cool as well doesn’t make it any better.

Emrys. Again.

Very, very privately, Arthur thinks his father is lucky they didn’t beat one another to death right there in the stalls.

“Well?” Uther asks, cool. “Will you be able to control yourself in future, or will I be forced to assign another agent to this case?”

“There won’t be any further problems,” Arthur says, clenching his hands together behind his back.

To his surprise, Uther lets out a humorless laugh. “Somehow I doubt that. This _is_ Emrys we’re speaking of. He was always a problem.”

“He was a good asset,” Arthur says before he can think about it—defending Merlin’s idiosyncrasies to his father had become a habit for a while, and a bad one. One he thought he’d broken.

Fortunately Uther lets the remark pass. “I’m counting on you to keep him on a leash this time. Don’t let him run amok, Arthur. This is too important.”

Arthur wants to laugh long and hard at the idea that he could control Merlin—Emrys— _ever_ —but this isn’t the time, and his father is right. This is serious.

“Don’t worry about Emrys,” he says. “I won’t let him out of my sight.”

_Not this time._

.


	3. Chapter 3

.

**_Chapter Three_ **

.

The mission briefing is fairly straightforward once Merlin finally gets a hold of the folder with Gaius’s small, spidery handwriting on the cover and in all of the notes in the margins. (Said handwriting, for the record, is nearly illegible enough to be considered some kind of code in its own right; Merlin swears there should be a code breaking workshop devoted to deciphering the correspondence of one’s handler without going blind from the effort.)

Some of it is information he already knew. Dr. Smithson has a background in chemical engineering that could—theoretically—make him capable of building a nuclear warhead. Which is obviously not a skill most people on the street walk around with. He’s been approached by almost every major government at one point or another, and with varying degrees of subtlety (the USSR gets some definite demerits there, Merlin thinks, flipping a page and pulling a face). At some point the good doctor got sick of what Merlin assumes were some pretty thinly veiled threats concerning what might happen if he didn’t sell out, changed his name and went underground.

And became a mechanic. Because, you know, that was the obvious career choice.

(Although Merlin has to admit that if he himself had decided to become a florist or something after his first ill-fated stint as a secret agent, it probably would have been much harder for his old agency to start tracking his movements again. Ah, hindsight.)

Anyway, the Invisible Man serum apparently wore off, because Dr. Smithson has been missing for several months. There’s no physical evidence of a kidnapping, but Gaius managed to turn up the fact that Dr. Smithson’s son—Guinevere’s brother—ran a garage in Italy that was recently bought out by a disgustingly rich European called (Merlin is not making this shit up) Agravaine duBois.

Merlin sort of spaces for a minute after he gets to that part of the report because he, like everyone in this business who has at least one working ear, has heard of Agravaine duBois.

The man is a persistent pain in law enforcement’s collective arse, old money paired with a penchant for arms dealing that a) seems more like a hobby than a vocation because he really does _not_ need the extra income, and b) is the most open secret in the European criminal underground. The fact that everybody knows what a slimeball Agravaine is makes it even more frustrating that nobody is ever able to catch him at it.

Not that Merlin is a member of law enforcement, per se, but as someone who would very much like it if the people of the world stopped blowing each other up for five minutes, he’s not exactly Agravaine’s biggest fan either.

It’s not hard to put two and two together. Kidnapping a chemical engineering genius is cheaper than hiring whoever normally vets Agravaine’s product. And Agravaine being Agravaine, he’ll take whatever the result of Dr. Smithson’s considerable talent is and then sell it off to the highest bidder like Gaius predicted—which, particularly if it’s the Soviets, is going to make all of their lives very difficult and probably very short.

Oh, and he’ll probably kill the doctor too. There’s one good reason nobody ever catches Agravaine at his work—the man does not tolerate loose ends.

So yes, this is pretty bad all around.

.

“So what is the plan here, exactly?”

Gaius’s Eyebrow makes its habitual appearance. “I beg your pardon?”

Merlin waves the file and its nearly-impossible-to-read notes around for emphasis. “I mean, I read the report, and this all sounds very terrible, so what exactly are we going to do about it? Dr. Smithson’s been missing for months, so it’s probably safe to assume that we’re working on a tight schedule, am I wrong?”

Gaius sighs. “You’re not wrong, Merlin, but we have to wait for your partner to arrive.”

It’s only thanks to years of intensive Spy Training™ that Merlin doesn’t groan out loud. Of course, how could he have forgotten? He and Arthur are going to be partners now. Again.

 _You’re going to have to get used to his being around eventually_ , he tells himself. _And sooner rather than later._

He proceeds to repeat this mantra in his head for the next five minutes, which means he’s prepared enough that he doesn’t twitch in his seat when the door to the office opens, nor does he give in to the instinctive impulse to turn around.

“Gaius,” Arthur says.

Behind the desk, Gaius nods to him. Merlin observes dully that there’s quite a bit of nodding involved in their profession. “Arthur. Thank you for making the trip.”

“It’s no trouble,” Arthur replies, sitting down in the chair next to Merlin’s and pointedly not looking at him. It’s like Merlin’s not even in the room. “Shall we get started?”

“Yes,” Merlin cuts in, his voice as bland as possible, “I’m sure Arthur has much better things to be doing.”

Arthur doesn’t react. Looks like he’s managed to tamp down on those pesky displays of human emotion he showed yesterday, if Uther didn’t do it for him. Gaius visibly holds back another sigh.

“Not yet,” he says. “We’re still waiting for one more member of our party.”

That’s news to Merlin, and to Arthur, if the almost imperceptible twitch of his eyebrows is anything to go by. Honestly, for so-called “organizations” their organizations are doing a really terrible job at keeping everybody in the loop.

Or they’re being deliberately kept in the dark, a notion that Merlin finds he likes even less than the first one.

“Another member?” Merlin repeats, since Arthur won’t ask. “You never said anything about someone else. Who is it?”

As if on cue, there’s a knock on the door. Which is odd. Generally speaking they don’t really have time for niceties when lives and reputations and countries and such are on the line; basic courtesy dictates showing up exactly on time and then wasting no time getting to the point, which is probably a good part of why Merlin’s getting so frustrated with all of this cloak and dagger nonsense.

“Come in,” Gaius calls.

The door opens and Guinevere steps in, looking nervous and determined to hide it, and Merlin doesn’t even need to look to know he and Arthur have the same gobsmacked expression on their faces.

“You?” he blurts, but she’s looking right past him, her eyes fixed on Arthur with a wariness that doesn’t really make sense—that is until Merlin remembers that her last and only other encounter with him was a high-speed chase that involved Arthur doing the majority of the chasing on foot. Like something out of those new X-Men comics. Merlin cringes and tries to reassure her.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s fine.” Then, upon consideration, “Well, he’s not really fine—actually he’s a bit of an arse, but he’s not here for you this time.” _Probably_. Gaius needs to tell them what the hell is going on, and quick.

Guinevere still looks wary, which frankly only makes Merlin like her more, but she takes the seat on Merlin’s other side. Gaius surveys the three of them, measuring in a way Merlin recognizes from his early days in the organization when he was constantly trying to prove himself useful and Gaius was constantly trying to decide whether Merlin was likely to get himself killed. With a sudden sinking feeling, he knows what’s coming.

“Congratulations,” Gaius says wryly. “All of you, meet your new teammates.”

“ _What_?”

Merlin thinks he’s going mad for a moment before realizing that yes, they did in fact all say it at the same time.

“It’s a team now?”

“ _He’s_ going to be involved?”

“No one said anything about civilians getting dragged into this.”

Gaius is patient for a minute, but then he puts up a hand and they fall silent like recalcitrant children.

“We are proceeding in this manner,” he says calmly, “because this mission is too large, too time sensitive and quite frankly too important to be left to any one agent or organization.”

Merlin appreciates the attempt at covering for his screw-up, he really does, but if this is going to be his punishment he’d almost rather just take the fall and get it over with. Gaius continues.

“Merlin, Arthur, not that either of your heads need inflating by any means, but you are two of the best agents our respective agencies currently have. And despite the awkwardness of your current situation, you have worked well together in the past. We are quite confident that you will be able to set aside your differences to complete the mission.”

There is another brief feat of eyebrow acrobatics that Merlin feels is unfairly pointed at him, but he has an entirely different problem to address.

“What about Guinevere?” he asks. “What has she got to—I mean, I know she’s already involved, sort of, but why is she coming along?”

Gaius opens his mouth but it’s Guinevere who answers, her tone steely calm. “ _She_ is coming along because _she_ is personally invested in making sure everything goes to plan. And also because Agravaine duBois now finds himself in possession of a garage, and I happen to know more about cars than either of you, which might just come in handy.”

“But you’re still a civilian!” Merlin insists, unable to believe _he’s_ the one pointing this out instead of, he doesn’t know, _whoever the hell vetted this choice in the first place_.

“And even if that wasn’t the case,” Arthur puts in, “you’re still the daughter of duBois’s target. What makes you think he won’t recognize you the moment he sees you?”

“That won’t be a problem,” Gaius says. “Guinevere was homeschooled for her entire life. There are very few records of her true name, and nothing in the way of pictures.”

“My father was—my father _is_ paranoid,” Guinevere adds. “He passed it on. I don’t even have a bank account; my garage pays me in cash.”

Merlin looks between them both, Guinevere and Gaius, like they’re mad. Which he is starting to believe, by the way.

“They still found your brother,” he says, careful. Guinevere’s eyes dip briefly to her hands, which have knotted together in her lap.

“Elyan is very good,” she says softly. “When he left to start his own business my father didn’t really think anything of it. Neither did I. But he started doing custom work, and then the wealthier clients started coming in, and…” She shrugs one shoulder. “Dad called him once, told him the whole thing was getting too big and that he should close everything down and lay low for a while. Elyan completely refused. He said he didn’t want to live his life in hiding.” She takes a breath. “I wasn’t so brave, so I should be fine. I won’t be recognized.”

“And where is Elyan now?” Arthur asks.

Her mouth twitches like she might smile. “Agravaine was probably hoping to use him as leverage over our father, wasn’t he? Well, Elyan is brave, not stupid. When he realized who was buying him out he disappeared with the help of some friends. I’m not sure where he is now, but it has to be safer than being employed by Agravaine duBois.”

She looks down at her hands again. Merlin wonders if it’d be awkward to put a hand on her shoulder, but Gaius’s voice cuts off any further thoughts in that direction.

“Now that that’s settled,” he says, “I have your aliases and specific assignments in these folders here. I suggest you study them now; you’ll want to get as much sleep on the flight to Rome as possible.” He gives Guinevere a considering look. “And I think there are a few more preparations to be made.”

.

Two hours later, Merlin is sitting in a clothing store so disgustingly fancy and well lit that he has the creeping feeling it’s probably what is referred to as a ‘boutique’. Which is a word that he has somehow managed to go two decades without having to use.

Arthur is sitting in one of the waiting room chairs, which are probably upholstered with silk or something equally opulent; he’s been staring a hole into the lavender paint job for the last thirty minutes. Probably already memorizing the details of his alias. Merlin’s own energies have been focused on checking his watch and pointedly ignoring the boutique’s courtesy phone, lest he give in to the temptation to call Gaius’s private number and demand to know what the hell his handler was thinking when he approved any of this.

This has always been par for the course with them. Arthur accepts the mission without question and gets to work making it as efficient as possible while Merlin tries to distract himself from impending doom—in this case, by flipping through the same four grossly expensive mini dresses over and over.

“How do you think Guinevere would look in orange?” he calls when he can’t take stewing in his own silence anymore. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Arthur twitch.

For a minute Merlin thinks he’s just going to be thoroughly ignored, but then Arthur says, like he’s getting his teeth pulled out one by one, “Depends on the shade. Yellow would be better.”

“Yellow?” Merlin squints at a dress with an elaborate lemon pattern on it. He’s become intimately familiar with every stitch of the dress by this point, and he still doesn’t understand the fashion world’s apparent preoccupation with fruit. “Wouldn’t that wash her out?”

Arthur actually responds again. He must be bored shitless as well. “It would contrast with her skin tone.”

“ _Or_ it would make her look sallow.”

“It would still look better than that green monstrosity you picked out earlier,” Arthur says, his voice more dangerous than Merlin thinks this conversation really warrants. He finds himself getting defensive.

“The green one had character! At least it wasn’t _beige_. Beige is the Ringo Starr of colors.”

“She looked terrible in the green,” Arthur snaps. Merlin smirks.

“Careful now. You’d talk about your own wife that way?”

Arthur looks at him like he dearly wishes he could snap Merlin’s neck somewhere with no witnesses. Merlin doesn’t even give a shit, frankly, because this is the only enjoyment he’s likely to get out of this whole mess and dammit, he’s going to make the most of it.

Arthur and Guinevere have been assigned Happy Couple Duty because married couples blend in better—he or Arthur could get away with going the bachelor route, no one would think much of it, but a single woman travelling by herself? That would stick out too much, certainly more than it would do if she were a man.

Honestly, sometimes the so-called real world is just as exhausting as the spy world.

Why Guinevere got saddled with _Arthur_ , on the other hand, is the real mystery. Merlin can only assume it’s a combination of a) Arthur needs someone to remind him that hitting a problem isn’t necessarily the best or only way to solve it, and b) Merlin has achieved enough of a reputation for suicidally reckless ideas that the higher-ups don’t really want to trust him with the life of a civilian. Which is sort of insulting, but Merlin’s finding the idea of Arthur and Guinevere as a married couple amusing enough to forgive the slight.

(He’s mostly laughing at Arthur’s annoyance, though. He sort of feels bad for Guinevere, especially since she obviously still has trust issues left over from the whole ‘you chased our car down on foot like a maniac and I sort of advocated shooting you in the leg’ thing.)

“Well, I still say orange would look better with the bag she picked out earlier,” he concludes.

“And you’re still wrong,” Arthur mutters.

“The yellow wouldn’t match,” Merlin points out.

“It doesn’t—!” There’s a pause. “It doesn’t have to match,” Arthur says, in a more measured tone. He glances up, sees the grin on Merlin’s face, and for a heart-skipping second Merlin imagines he’s about to return it.

A similar realization must cross Arthur’s mind because his face immediately shuts down, and he goes back to staring at the wall.

Merlin bites back a sigh. He knows he shouldn’t be antagonizing Arthur like this, but he can’t help it. Normal for them has always been acerbic comments and verbal fencing; he’s missed it these last two years, missed it desperately if he’s being honest, and now that Arthur’s here…well, it’s an easy habit to slip back into.

“Lilac,” a third voice says, tugging him out of his thoughts. Merlin and Arthur both turn to see Guinevere coming out of the changing room, a light purple dress slung over her arm. She’s back in her regular clothes.

“I think I’ll get the lilac,” she clarifies. “If you’re through talking about me as if I’m not here, that is.” She turns to Arthur and adds, with a hint of dryness, “I imagine it’ll suit the wife of an architectural professor just fine.”

Arthur opens his mouth and promptly closes it. Merlin blinks.

“You’re finished?”

“Yes. Is there a problem?”

“It’s just…” Merlin knows he’s been enough of a wrecking ball in Guinevere’s life lately, so he’s trying not to be a pain in the arse, but really. “If we weren’t here to offer opinions, then why _were_ we here?”

“I’m not sure,” she says sweetly. “It might have something to do with the fact that I feel more and more like a babysitter?”

Which sounds depressingly Gaius-like enough that Merlin shuts up and lets it go.

.

Gwen leaves the boutique with a bag of clothing that probably costs more than most of the cars she’s worked on. The lilac dress is especially beautiful, and some tiny shallow part of her wonders if she’ll be allowed to keep it once all this is over.

Emrys and Arthur have stopped bickering for the moment; Arthur is standing on the curb squinting for the car that’s meant to pick them all up while Emrys hangs back with Gwen underneath the shop’s awning.

“The lilac did look good on you,” he offers, sounding embarrassed. She finds herself smiling.

“Thank you, Emrys.”

He coughs. “You can call me Merlin, you know. If you like.”

She glances sideways at him, a little surprised. “Arthur doesn’t. I guess I just assumed…”

“Arthur is a prat,” Emrys—Merlin says, with a quickness that suggests that’s his default response to anything involving the other agent.

Gwen smiles again. “Your accent’s changed.”

Merlin makes a face. “I know. I should be sticking to Brooklyn to stay in practice, but, well…” He shrugs awkwardly. “There’s really no need to, here.”

“Are you Welsh, then?”

“Yeah. I’ve been living in the States for a few years now, though.”

She wonders what he’d say if she asked him why. Merlin is looking down now, though, fiddling with the plain leather-banded watch on his wrist, and Gwen doesn’t think they’ve been acquainted long enough for her to pry.

“Well,” she says instead, “you can call me Gwen, if you like.”

Merlin beams at her a bit before Arthur comes back to them, all business.

“Car’s pulling up,” he informs them. “But first there’s one more thing.”

He reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket and withdraws a small black box. Flipping it open, he reveals a delicate silver ring with a single sparkling diamond in its center.

“We are meant to be married, after all,” he says, and if Gwen didn’t know any better she’d say he was uncomfortable with the prospect. That makes two of them, seeing as her chief memory of Arthur is still him running after them in the dark.

She reaches out and takes the ring, though, because there’s a job that needs doing and she is damn well going to do it right.

It fits her ring finger perfectly. Gwen has a feeling she doesn’t want to ask why.

“Cheers.” Merlin sounds far too amused.

Gwen looks at Arthur. “Thank you,” she says, unsure what else to say. Arthur coughs and glances back over his shoulder.

“Ah. There’s the car.”

.

The most Merlin can say about the flight is that he and Arthur don’t have to deal with one another. Arthur hates flying in the first place; Merlin pities Gwen being stuck with his irritable, borderline misanthropic self for nine hours.

In an unusual turn of events, Merlin finds himself flying first class because his alias is exactly the sort of rich bastard he loathes the most, the kind that flashes his money about everywhere like he’s showing off. He knows he’s got something of a prejudice against the obscenely wealthy, the result of growing up with a single working-class mother who spent her free time picketing outside of faceless corporations with questionable business ethics, and it had taken months for a certain blond prat in Uther’s organization to inadvertently convince Merlin that he wasn’t actually one of them.

Although it needs to be said that Arthur is still more accustomed to flying first class than Merlin ever will be.

Which is why he’s finding it funny that while he’s cheerfully drinking champagne and sitting in a seat that _doesn’t_ make his spine feel like it’s about to snap in half, Arthur is somewhere in economy with Gwen. A professor isn’t going to have the budget to fly anywhere first class, especially one that’s newly married, so the tables have turned and Merlin is trying his best to enjoy it.

He’s not, really, but he _is_ getting to drink champagne and that’s probably the next best thing.

Somewhere in the fourth or fifth hour of the flight, when Merlin’s convinced he’s been enough of an arse that nobody will question how rich he is, he settles back in his seat and mentally reviews his new identity. This is the fun part of the process, he thinks, taking the broad strokes given to him by the organization and filling in the details until an actual person emerges. Or at least a passable facsimile of one.

His alias’s name is Napoleon Solo, which is just… _so_ blatantly false that Merlin is forced to admit that it’s actually sort of brilliant. Nobody in his right mind would go about trying to use a fake name that ridiculous, ergo the name must be real. (Someone must have twisted Uther’s arm to get him to agree to this, because he’s the one who always insisted on Merlin going by Emrys in all company because Merlin was too obviously a fake name for anyone to take him seriously. Even though it’s, again, _his real bloody name_.)

Mr. Solo is an already-rich son of an even richer father who recently died, leaving Napoleon with the keys to the proverbial castle. Napoleon has honored his late father’s memory by hosting a multitude of increasingly wild parties and indulging his taste for rare antiquities.

In short, he’s a massive prat. Fortunately Merlin has had enough experience with massive prats to make this one rather convincing.

He has a passing familiarity with Arthur and Gwen’s aliases as well—husband and wife as of last month, on honeymoon to Rome; Arthur is a professor of architecture at a nondescript university and Gwen is his equally nondescript wife. All of their covers give them good reasons to be in Rome: Arthur’s theoretical architectural expertise makes the location likely, while Merlin’s interest in antiques gives him an excuse to gad about Europe and his money gives him an in with the upper crust of society here.

In theory, it’s a solid beginning.

.

But of course, Merlin remembers after they’ve landed and checked in and he’s clocked the not-so-metaphorical eyes burning into their backs, the Roman Empire was solid as a bloody rock and look at how well _that_ had turned out.

He’s already rented a Vespa; it was the first thing he did upon checking into the hotel because a) it seems like the sort of thing an inconspicuous dolt like Napoleon Solo would do and, more pertinently, b) Merlin has always wanted to ride on a Vespa. So ride it he does, right up to where Gwen and Arthur are admiring a large and impressive fountain.

Arthur is already glaring at him before Merlin has come within speaking distance. It’s like he has some sort of radar that picks up Merlin’s presence and subsequently makes him even more irritable than usual, a feat in and of itself.

“What are you doing?” he grits out once Merlin’s come close enough to hear. Gwen is leaning over his shoulder curiously. “We can’t be seen together, you know that.”

“You’re being followed,” Merlin says matter-of-factly, pretending to be fascinated by the no doubt historically significant fountain in front of them. “They’ve been on your tail since we left the airport.”

“I know,” Arthur says tightly. “We’ll lose them.”

“Lose them?” Gwen repeats, a faint crease appearing between her eyebrows even as she remains focused on ostensibly taking pictures. “Won’t that make them suspicious?”

“Gwen’s right,” Merlin says before Arthur can argue. “If these are professionals they won’t be expecting a tourist to be able to dodge them. You need to let them tail you and keep a low profile.”

“Yes, because I was planning on setting off fireworks in the middle of the square.”

Merlin forces himself to smile, because he might give in to the urge to throw something if he doesn’t. “Then we’re good. Just keep being your charming, normal self and we shouldn’t have a problem.”

“Watch your own back, Emrys,” Arthur says, eyes still on the fountain. “I am perfectly capable of watching mine.”

He turns and walks away before Merlin can say anything more; Gwen follows, tossing a brief apologetic look back over her shoulder. Merlin sighs and gets back on the Vespa—he might as well get _some_ sightseeing out of this godforsaken adventure.

.

Arthur doesn’t mean to seethe. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until they’ve been walking for ten minutes and Gwen puts a careful hand on his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

The simple kindness of it startles him out of what Arthur belatedly recognizes as an Emrys-induced brood. Guinevere, he realizes with a twinge of guilt, has less reason than most to have any warm feelings toward him—he does rather vividly remember chasing her car down on foot.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hating how awkward the words sound. “My being…distracted won’t affect your protection, I promise you that.”

To his surprise, she rolls her eyes. “I’m not worried about you not being able to ‘protect’ me.” She considers. “Well, I am. I’m not completely naïve; I know threatening these people with a—a wrench or something isn’t going to make them go away. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t also be worried that _you’re_ going to get yourself shot or something because you’re caught up over something else.”

Arthur blinks. “Ah.” Then, “Thank you. I think.”

Guinevere smiles. It’s a pretty smile. “You’re welcome.”

They walk for a bit in silence, but it’s admittedly a much nicer silence than the previous one. They’ve made their way outside of the immediate city bustle now, wandering around old ruins that exist peacefully side by side with more modern architecture. It’s fascinating enough that Arthur thinks he could get into this architectural professor role after all.

Then he hears the footsteps behind them.

A quick glance sideways says that Guinevere’s noticed it too; her face has gone abruptly hard where it had been soft, the only outward betrayal of fear from someone well used to it. The footfalls are a short distance behind, three or four men to Arthur’s hearing, but the number isn’t the problem. What concerns him is that they’re not bothering to keep themselves quiet.

“Stay close,” he says under his breath. Guinevere gives a tiny nod. They keep walking, but it’s too much to hope that their tails will let them pass through this deserted area without being accosted.

Sure enough, another man—late thirties, wiry build, ratty jacket—steps out of the shadows and directly into their path. He takes a drag from his cigarette and smiles in a way that Arthur really does not like.

“Good evening,” he says cheerfully—another Englishman, and with just enough slime in his words that Arthur feels slightly relieved. Not a professional tail, then—none of them are. They’re not subtle enough, and there would be no value in revealing themselves to a mark this early in the game if they were. These are just typical street thieves looking to take advantage of wealthy-looking tourists foolish enough to wander deserted areas at night.

“I like your jacket,” the man in the ratty jacket is saying, pulling his cigarette from his mouth to make the words more legible. Arthur shrugs and pretends not to notice the man’s compatriots pressing in slightly closer.

“Do you?” he says, pulling his arms carefully from the sleeves. He tosses the jacket to the other man and tries not to let bitterness enter his voice. This isn’t the time or the place for it; they still need to be discreet. “Take it, then. A gift.”

The man in the ratty jacket catches the article of clothing, examines it briefly, and puts it on. He sinks into a mock bow.

“You’re generous with your gifts, my friend. We’d like to pay you back—maybe by carrying something for you?” He smirks at Guinevere. “That ring of yours looks heavy, doesn’t it?”

Guinevere, to her credit, betrays no fear whatsoever. She pulls the engagement ring off her finger and holds it out for one of the other thieves with the bored air of a wealthy woman who has eight other such rings in her carryon luggage. Arthur can’t help feeling somewhat impressed.

The feeling evaporates when the ringleader’s eyes catch on Arthur’s own hand.

“That real silver?” He asks it mildly enough, but his eyes glint with greed and a sick feeling twists Arthur’s stomach.

“No,” he forces himself to say, knowing in his gut that it’s already too late. “It’s imitation. Nothing more.”

“Still,” the man says. “Think we’ll relieve you of it.”

Arthur’s hand clenches into a fist before he can stop it. The ratty man’s false smile slides off his face like rancid butter; he drops his cigarette, crushes the butt under his boot heel.

“Is there a problem, friend?” he asks, coming close enough that Arthur can smell the rot on his breath. The familiar pulse of adrenaline is beginning to beat through him, the pounding of his heart audible to his own ears, his jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth, and he still hasn’t loosened his hands.

Unbidden as always, Emrys’ voice comes back to him: _Keep a low profile_. It’s nothing Arthur doesn’t already know, but that’s hard to remember when a greasy-haired man with cold eyes is looking at him with so much arrogance and Arthur can’t do anything about it. He has no doubt they’re still being watched; this delightful little group might well have been set on them by whoever is doing the following, whoever might be interested in seeing how a pair of ostensibly innocuous tourists handle an unexpected situation. Will they act like the average citizens they supposedly are? Or…?

“I’m waiting,” the ratty man sneers. His friends seem to be getting closer, and B-movie-worthy villain dialogue aside, Arthur can see Guinevere’s face and knows that despite her brave front she’s beginning to get scared. She might be the smarter of them.

All the same, Arthur thinks he’s already frightened her enough. And at the very least he promised to keep her safe. Which means—

Arthur unclenches his fist.

He can’t say, “Take it”. His jaw won’t unlock and his tongue wouldn’t form the words even if it did.

Not that the ratty man waits for an invitation. His smile returns—with a hint of relief that makes Arthur even more pissed about not being able to take him down a peg or six—as he slides the ring off Arthur’s finger.

“Pleasure meeting you,” the ratty man says, and it takes every shred of Arthur’s self-control to keep from drawing his gun right there. But the moment passes; in seconds the man and his followers are out of sight and then it’s just the two of them again.

“Bastards,” Guinevere says under her breath. She turns to him. “Arthur?”

It takes a moment for Arthur to calm the blood roaring in his ears, to hear what she’s saying.

“It’s fine,” he hears himself say. “Nothing to worry about, and we kept our cover. You did well.”

She ignores the compliment. “That ring, was it—it was important, wasn’t it?”

Arthur shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. The words sound strange leaving his mouth, just as his finger feels strange without the familiar weight of silver-banded gold weighing it down. “I shouldn’t have worn it here. That was stupid of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sounds genuine too, which is unexpectedly touching. Arthur dredges up a smile.

“We should get back to the hotel. I think that’s quite enough excitement for one night, don’t you?”

.


	4. Chapter 4

.

**_Chapter Four_ **

.

The hotel Gaius booked for them is exactly the kind of grossly opulent place Merlin imagines a prat like Napoleon Solo would be staying, so he supposes it’ll be helpful for staying in character. His room is down the hall from Arthur and Gwen’s, but since he’s supposed to be Mr. Rich Playboy he actually gets a suite instead of a normal room. Or whatever passes for “normal” in this place.

He’s distracted enough by the gilded furnishings, and the gold-leaf-trimmed ceiling, and the pillows so fluffy they’re probably stuffed with the individually chosen feathers from a swan belonging to the Pope or something equally ridiculous, that it takes Merlin longer than it normally would to notice something off. It’s only when he goes to change clothes that he figures out what’s bothering him.

He glances down the hall before strolling down it and knocking on Gwen and Arthur’s door—they’re not meant to know one another, but it’s late enough by now that they shouldn’t face too much interruption.

Arthur answers the door, looking annoyed as usual by the fact that Merlin is still breathing air. “Does the idea of subtlety really escape you that much?”

“This’ll be a short conversation,” Merlin assures him, nudging into the room and reaching into his pocket as Arthur shuts the door. “Catch.”

Arthur does, one at a time, as Merlin tosses the little listening devices into his waiting palm and punctuates each toss with a word.

“These…are…English…made.” He tilts his head. “And the antenna on this one looks like it’s got something wrong with its microphone. You should probably look into getting that fixed.”

“Is that so,” Arthur muses, closing the bugs in his hand. With his other hand, he reaches into his own pocket and adds, somewhat sardonically, “Catch.”

Merlin knows what’s coming, but instinct has him catching the bugs anyway as Arthur throws his own words back at him.

“These…are…American…made. With a shoddy design typical of your agency’s R&D department.” Arthur folds his arms. “Maybe if you stopped outsourcing everything your lot could keep up with Britain in that regard.”

 _They’re not ‘my lot’, you absolute snob_. “You’re one to talk. Speaking of R &D, are your people still letting Edwin dick around down there?”

Arthur ignores him. “If you keep putting bugs on my suits they’re eventually going to tear, and I won’t be happy about it.”

“I could say the same,” Merlin replies irritably. “Except I don’t actually have an endless supply of suits like you do, so if you’d have some consideration for the peons—”

There’s the click of a key, and the door opens again.

“Emrys? Is that you?”

Gwen is in the doorway. Arthur moves to the side to give her room, looking more displeased with this impromptu little party by the second. Merlin smiles encouragingly at her.

“How are you holding up?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose,” she says with a shrug and an attempted smile. “Nothing’s really happened yet.”

She glances at Arthur as she says it, and Merlin wonders what that’s all about. He has an uncomfortable feeling it might have to do with the fact that Arthur’s ring finger is currently empty. His own fingers drift to his watch.

“Anyway,” Gwen is saying, “that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. I heard a few of the other guests talking downstairs about Agravaine duBois. Apparently he’s hosting some kind of party at my brother’s—” Her mouth twists. “At his new garage, that is. To show off some of the cars. Seems like the sort of thing we should look into, doesn’t it?”

Merlin blinks at her.

“Definitely, yeah,” he says after a second. “I’ll get a hold of Gaius, see if we can’t get some last-minute invitations.”

“Last-minute invitations look suspicious,” Arthur says. “I’ll see if one of the lesser-known guests can’t be conveniently detained.”

Merlin frowns. “And what, hope nobody else attending knows what he looks like?”

“Better than a name suddenly appearing on the list of—”

Gwen clears her throat. “Gentlemen?”

She’s holding up three pristinely white envelopes. Merlin gapes.

“How did you—”

“Agravaine might own the place now,” she interrupts, “but it was Elyan’s garage for a long time, and I do still have friends there. Even…even after everything that’s happened.”

Gwen looks between them as if daring them to say anything unhelpful. “Well? Will this do?”

Merlin has long been of the opinion that one of the key attitudes to cultivate, as a bona fide Secret Agent of Questionable Reputation, is a tolerance toward flexibility. It’s truly astonishing how often he’s been forced to build sandcastles from the ashes of his previously well-thought-out plans.

He likes to think he’s become something of an expert in this arena, so it’s with perfect nonchalance that he takes one of the proffered envelopes.

“Can’t see why not,” he says.

Arthur side-eyes him in a way that says, quite clearly, that _Arthur_ can in fact see multitudes of reasons “why not” but is unable to think of any better ideas at this point in time. He too takes an envelope.

“Good,” Gwen says. “That’s settled, then. I hope everyone brought their party clothes.”

.

‘Party’, Merlin thinks, was possibly too strong a word.

Of course it’s equally possible that he’s just a hopeless plebe, despite all the work that’s gone into making him capable of playing the opposite. Merlin thinks he could accept that, because his plebian idea of a party is leagues more interesting than whatever _this_ is meant to be.

Fun fact about being a professional spy: it involves a lot less in the way of ball gowns and Venetian masquerades than you’d get from watching Bond. Merlin was sort of disappointed by this during his first few months on the job because even if he can’t stand rich people on principle, he can still appreciate their food and the whole aesthetic of the thing. But he’s never really been to an event like this—small, relatively private, and occupied solely by the excruciatingly rich.

As such, Merlin has no idea if the absolutely _numbing_ level of boredom he’s experiencing right now is typical of such events or not.

Agravaine wasted no time in attaching an honest-to-god racetrack to his new garage, complete with professional racers to show off Elyan Smithson’s souped-up cars, so that’s where the bulk of the attention seems to be (including Gwen’s—she is a mechanic, after all, and Merlin can’t really begrudge her for getting _some_ fun out of this). The rest of them are under a wide white tent with assorted hors d’oeuvres and a gigantic ice sculpture (of swans, because apparently what Agravaine duBois has in business acumen he lacks in imagination) and not nearly enough champagne, in Merlin’s humble opinion.

Arthur seems to have made himself scarce, the bastard, probably investigating the perimeter or something similarly dull, so Merlin is left alone to contemplate throwing himself onto the racetrack to end his misery. Or at least liven things up a little.

Forty minutes of polite greetings and staring down those damned ice swans and Merlin decides he’s going to lose his mind if he doesn’t do something petty to occupy himself, because the people around him haven’t had any conversation so far that’s more scintillating than ‘so-and-so’s horse lost at the races’ and ‘so-and-so spent the cost of a small island on her party dress’. This is not the Life of Excitement he signed up for as an agent. Hell, he’d almost prefer being shot at.

A middle-aged blonde woman practically dripping with jewels meets his eye and smiles. Merlin smiles back and prays she’ll have something to say that doesn’t involved horses or dresses. Horses _in_ dresses, maybe…

“Lady Ragnell,” she introduces herself, offering a hand. Merlin has the sinking feeling he’s supposed to kiss it, so he does…and slips her diamond (from the look of it) bracelet off her wrist in the process, holding it against his palm, smiling all the while.

For the record, Merlin doesn’t steal. Especially at fancy events like these; his mother worked as a waitress for eighteen years, so he’s well aware than whenever anything goes wrong, the staff are the ones who pay for it. Usually with their jobs.

So, no stealing. That doesn’t mean he can’t occasionally move things around to keep his brain from leaking out of his ears and all over the pristine lawn.

He nods and smiles and makes what he thinks are the appropriate noises, fighting not to look down at his watch as Lady Ragnell regales him with tales of yet another horse, her husband’s apparently, and how happy she is to see another Englishman here because she’s been so bereft lately of people who appreciate True Culture. In _Rome_. Throwing himself in front of a moving vehicle is beginning to sound appealing again.

Finally, one of the woman’s friends waves to her from across the tent and she offers Merlin an apologetic smile. Merlin waves her off cheerfully and even takes her hand again—shaking it this time because he does have his limits, thank you very much. As he does, he slips the bracelet back on her wrist. She doesn’t even notice.

It killed a few minutes, at least.

“That was nicely done,” a female voice says from behind him, and Merlin very nearly jumps. “I almost didn’t notice it had moved.”

Merlin turns around. The speaker is a woman, dark-haired and absolutely stunning. Familiar, even, in the way these sorts of people all begin to seem after enough time. Merlin puts on his most gormless smile, the one he’s been told comes off as both endearing and rather dim.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he says, slipping smoothly into the received pronunciation he defaults to in situations like this. The woman’s amused smile doesn’t budge.

“Lady Ragnell’s bracelet is on the wrong wrist,” she replies. “She’s left-handed.”

“Oh, is she?” Merlin takes a sip of champagne and tries not to show that he’s impressed. Or embarrassed. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“I doubt that,” she says, smoothly taking a champagne flute from a passing waiter without causing him to miss a step. “I haven’t seen you at any of these little gatherings before, Mister…?”

“Solo,” Merlin supplies, offering a hand. “Napoleon Solo.”

She extends her hand in return. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Solo. Might I ask after your occupation—outside of hopelessly confusing the other guests, that is?”

“Antiquities.”

One of her immaculately manicured eyebrows flickers upward. “Oh?”

Merlin spreads his arms in a calculatedly overexcited gesture. “Where better to hunt for new rarities than in Rome? I heard Mr. duBois is a fan of high culture. I was hoping to ask him about his personal collection; I have a few items lined up that he might be interested in.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “Mr. duBois only ever spends the bare minimum of time at these parties,” she says. “He’d much rather be spending time with that ‘high culture’ you mentioned.” Her mouth curls up at the corner. “The man is all work and very little play, I’m afraid.”

Merlin leans forward a bit, conspiratorial. “Actually, I wondered if Mr. duBois is, ah…diversifying his interests? Given this splendid garage and all. Is he looking to get into sport?”

The woman tilts her head to the side. She’s running a finger along the rim of her glass in a way that doesn’t quite seem absentminded. “Perhaps he wanted to shake things up. Make a change.”

Merlin blinks. The woman is still smiling, perfectly friendly, but something feels strange. He feels like he’s a step behind, like he’s missing something.

Like she can see into his head somehow.

His skin crawling a bit at the thought, Merlin keeps a smile plastered on his face. “I’ve been spending time in Vienna lately, and the faces in these circles change so fast—I’m sorry, but I don’t think I managed to catch your name?”

But he gave his, he remembers, as her smile widens in a way that would look apologetic if it wasn’t so sharp. He gave his alias, but she offered nothing in return. And why does he still feel like he knows her from somewhere?

“Morgan,” she says. “Morgan Faye. I’m Mr. duBois’ fiancée.”

Merlin’s brain sticks briefly on _fiancée_ — _what the hell, why was **that** never in any of the surveillance reports?_ —before backtracking to the name Morgan, and a memory suddenly crashes into his head.

He knows her face. He’s never seen it before in person though, only in a simple wooden frame: a photograph of a green-eyed teenager looping her arms around a blond boy in a footie jersey. Both of them were smiling.

Merlin had been searching for spare boxers when he’d found that picture. It had been shoved in the back of Arthur’s dresser drawer.

Training keeps his mouth moving even though his brain has stalled, the charming small talk of a boringly posh alias. “It’s good to meet you, Miss Faye. I’m staying at the Piazza Hotel while I’m in Rome—I hope we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

She takes a sip of her drink, green eyes still fixed on his. That smile has never once left her exquisite face. “I’m sure we will, Mr. Solo. I look forward to it.”

She’s swept away before Merlin can so much as blink. He forces himself to wait two seconds, three, four, before making his way to the loo in deliberately slow movements. He waits until he’s out of sight of the rest of the party before tossing his champagne flute into a bin—he’s suddenly a lot less willing to take chances on some overzealous security worker deciding to check for fingerprints.

Thankfully, his first guess was correct—Arthur is lurking in the stalls to avoid the general populace. He frowns when Merlin appears.

“What are you doing here? Aren’t you meant to be slithering into the good graces of our hosts?”

“You have to get out of here,” Merlin cuts him off, his mind racing. Shit, what if this place is bugged? What if they’re _all_ bugged? “Now. Make sure no one sees you.”

Arthur unfolds his arms and steps closer, his frown deepening. “We haven’t finished gathering intel. We’re staying until—”

“ _The situation has changed_.” Merlin takes a deep breath. “I just met Agravaine’s fiancée.”

Confusion crosses Arthur’s face. “Fiancée? We weren't told anything about a fiancée, are you certain?”

“She’s using the name Morgan Faye, but she’s—” He swallows hard. “Arthur, it’s Morgana. Your sister is here.”

Arthur’s expression goes carefully blank.

“That’s impossible,” he says quietly.

“I would’ve said the same thing an hour ago,” Merlin replies. Arthur’s eyes narrow.

“Emrys, you have no idea what you’re—”

_Oh, for god’s sake._

“Do you think I would mistake something like this?” he hisses. “Do you honestly think I would throw her in your face if I wasn’t sure? What the hell do you take me for, Arthur?” Arthur opens his mouth, but if he actually answers that question then Merlin might actually strangle him, so he barrels on. “Look, you can break in to review security footage or whatever you like later if you don’t believe me, but right now you need to _leave_. I don’t know if she knows something or if this is just a massive coincidence, but if she sees you here then we’re all fucked.”

Arthur is staring at him. Merlin shuts his mouth and keeps it shut, even if he does feel a sudden urge to apologize—this is a bombshell he’s dropping right smack in the middle of Arthur’s life, and ideally they would be in a situation where he had more time to break the news gently (read: not like an arse), but this is not an ideal situation and he’s trying to do what he can.

It’s not like Arthur can hate him much more at this point anyway.

“I need to get Gwen,” Arthur says at last. It sounds like he’s trying to talk from underwater. “It’ll look strange if the professor disappears without his wife.”

Merlin shakes his head. “You can’t go back out there,” he says. “We can take it from here, and I can look out for Gwen. You need to go.”

Slowly, Arthur nods. “I’ll report back to my—back to Uther. This changes things. He’ll…he’ll want to be informed.”

Some stupid leftover _thing_ in Merlin aches for him, but all he says is, “Be careful.”

Arthur nods again, still looking like he’s been slapped out of a sound sleep. He walks past Merlin to get to the door, and it takes everything Merlin has not to reach out.

Instead he gives it a minute so it doesn’t _look_ like they’re been having a nice chat in the loo before going out and rejoining the party. Arthur is already out of sight, which is good; Merlin had half-expected him to go striding right up to Morgana and demanding explanations. At which point, from what few stories he’d managed to wrest from Arthur’s mouth way back when, Merlin imagines Morgana would have clawed his eyes out.

He bypasses the party tent this time in favor of the racetrack, and tells himself it’s not because Morgana Pendragon unnerves the shit out of him.

He nabs another champagne flute from a passing waiter (that he is _not_ going to drink, he tells himself sternly, because getting tipsy on the job never ends well even if it does wonders for one’s nerves) and looks out at the same sleek black car speeding round and round. The wealthy people around him seem to think this is the height of entertainment, but personally, Merlin finds it utterly mindless.

All the better then, because he’s got plenty on his mind as it is.

Why is Morgana here? Merlin barely knows anything about the woman, only that she was an agent and that her disappearance caused a stir that was still rippling when Merlin joined up a few months later. If she went rogue, maybe she needed money and that was why she took up with Agravaine?

Or does she approve of his work? Is she _helping_ him?

_She’s Arthur’s sister!_

_And Uther is their father, what’s your point?_

Even if she doesn’t have some sort of game going with Agravaine, she’s still a former agent. How much does she know, or suspect? Is Merlin just being paranoid?

His thoughts go round and round like the damn car on the track, only they don’t stop when the vehicle in question finally does.

Merlin doesn’t notice that the driver is getting out to join the crowd until the people around him start making appreciative sounds of surprise. Like they’ve just been gifted with some new entertainment. He looks up, trying to see over the absolutely massive hat of the woman in front of him, and—

_Agravaine duBois._

The funny thing is, the man actually _looks_ like the sort of person you’d suspect of being an under-the-table arms dealer. Which is almost disappointing. Some part of Merlin (that apparently never grew past five years old) has always been intrigued by the thought of having a nemesis, some recurring foe to play the cat to his mouse and vice versa. He doesn’t actively _want_ one, of course, because childhood fantasies don’t justify putting people in harm’s way, but in Merlin’s imaginings the nemesis had always been someone quietly intimidating. Someone intelligent. Someone _subtle_.

Agravaine duBois is about as subtle as Herman Munster. Only less lovable. Seriously, the man looks like he stepped off the set of a Bond film; all he needs is a revolving chair and some unfortunate-looking cat. Maybe one of those hairless Egyptian affronts against man and nature.

The longer Merlin looks the more disappointing it gets. Agravaine without the driver’s helmet has greasy black hair, a smarmy smile—he’s wearing all black, for god’s sake. And it’s _summer_. The personal betrayal Merlin feels is probably very unprofessional, but it’s there.

All the same, he’s preparing to muster his best Wealthy Prick impersonation to try and get Agravaine’s attention when Merlin realizes Agravaine’s attention is already occupied. By a petite black woman with curly hair and bright copper eyes.

Gwen is talking to Agravaine. Gwen is actually _smiling_ at Agravaine. Merlin would gape if he weren’t surrounded by people; the woman obviously has nerves wrought from solid steel.

He backs off. Too many new friends at one time might make Agravaine suspicious, and if he’s being honest, Merlin is very curious to see what Gwen does next.

.

“Mr. duBois?”

Agravaine duBois turns from his circle of admirers and looks at Gwen, the corner of his mouth curling up in a manner that would probably be charming if Gwen didn’t have any idea who he was.

“And who might you be?”

She offers her hand and tries to ignore her heartbeat pounding in her ears. “Abigail Teller. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Agravaine murmurs, taking her hand and bending down to brush his lips over it. Gwen represses a violent shudder.

“Your car,” she says brightly. “Is that a McLaren Mk6?”

His eyebrows go up. “You’re familiar with the design?”

“Oh yes.” Gwen doesn’t have to fake her enthusiasm. “It’s got a top speed of two-hundred, doesn’t it?”

“Two-hundred and seven, to be precise.” Agravaine smirks. “I’m having my engineers go to work on upping even that.”

“Maybe if you adjusted the front wings a little?” Gwen draws a shape in the air over the (admittedly beautiful) car. “Like so?”

It’s working, she can tell. She has Agravaine’s undivided attention.

“I fear I haven’t seen your face before, Miss Teller,” he says. “A crime, to be sure.”

“I’m here on my honeymoon.” Gwen adopts what she hopes is a suitably downcast look. “But my husband is terribly busy, you see, so I’m afraid I’ve been left to fend for myself.”

She sort of wants to throw up in her mouth, but Agravaine looks sympathetic.

“Perhaps I can assuage your loneliness, then. Would you like to come to my villa for tea sometime? We could further discuss improvements to the McLaren if you like.” That smile again. “I could even show you my private collection of racing cars.”

“That would be lovely,” Gwen says warmly, hating herself a little more with every syllable. “I’ll be at the Piazza Hotel, should you like to contact me.”

Agravaine duBois kisses her hand again. “I most certainly will.”

.

It’s been said on many an evaluation that one of Arthur’s greatest strengths as an agent is his ability to compartmentalize. When faced with a particularly chaotic or fraught situation, rather than panicking or drowning in a rush of adrenaline, he enters a place of icy calm. Outside sounds are muffled and sharpened all at once; his senses are strangely muted and yet, paradoxically, he’s the most focused he’s ever been. Not a single thought is allowed to remain in his head outside of the immediate objective.

Currently, his objective is to leave the party without being seen by anyone who might stop him. Including—

_Morgana, my sister who is gone, my sister who left—_

Morgan Faye, Agravaine duBois’ fiancée. No point in showing his face before it’s necessary. If their identities have been compromised by Morgana’s involvement, it’s even more important that he stay as far away from Emrys as possible.

Arthur walks with unassailable calm, with ease, maybe even with a bit of boredom—typical of a wealthy partygoer searching for new diversions. His pace is not fast or slow enough to attract attention. He is a perfect blank, nondescript, not worth noting. His breathing doesn’t even speed up.

The only shaky moment is when he passes the main tent and hears a trill of high, female laughter. His steps slow, just for a second.

It could be Morgana. He could turn around and see his sister’s face for the first time in years.

But the mission is more important, so Arthur keeps walking. He makes his way to his car and drives back to the hotel.

.


	5. Chapter 5

.

**_Chapter Five_ **

.

Morgana had entered the agency two years before Arthur had. She was gone before he’d been assigned his first mission.

The shockwaves reverberated throughout the agency despite all attempts to seal the details; Morgana Pendragon had been one of the fastest-rising stars in recent memory, despite her persistently difficult relationship with Uther, and then suddenly she was gone. Deserted.

That had been the hardest thing for Uther, Arthur thinks. If Morgana had been killed in action they would have mourned, they might have even exacted revenge if the opportunity had presented itself, but more importantly they would have understood. They could have at least taken solace in the knowledge that she had died fighting, doing the job she loved.

(And she had loved it, Arthur knows. He remembers hearing stories about her exploits whenever she was home for more than an hour at a time, and he remembers the light in her eyes whenever she described—with names redacted, of course—some daring last-minute improvisation that had saved the mission and possibly the world at large. If he’s honest with himself, listening to those stories marked the first times Arthur anticipated joining the agency with anything other than detached assumption.)

Instead she had gone off the rails and off the radar. No body, no note, no murmur from any contacts that the agency could dredge up. No ominous messages from some enemy of the organization looking to make a statement.

Just a thorough erasing of her tracks and an equally thorough emptying of her bank account.

Arthur was taught at an early age to expect nothing from others, to rely on himself and himself only. On the whole, he thinks the attitude has served him rather well. But he had expected something from Morgana because she was family: he had expected her to stay. Or at the very least to offer an explanation if she couldn’t manage that.

She hadn’t been able—or willing—to do either.

.

Guinevere isn’t in their room—she and Emrys are still back at that blasted party—so Arthur has some privacy in which to call his handler.

It’s only now, alone in the hotel room and trying to dial the first of many numbers that will eventually connect him to the agency, that Arthur begins to feel the jitter of adrenaline shivering into his fingers, up his spine. It’s a sweltering summer in Rome and he still feels like he’s freezing.

He almost fucks up the code on the third connecting line because his head is beginning to swim.

“Yes?” Uther’s dry, cool voice is more of a relief than it’s ever been. “What is it?”

Arthur clears his throat and rallies. “The situation here has changed,” he says. “We’ve run into a…complication.”

He can feel his f—his handler’s impatience on the other line, knows Uther doesn’t like being led around by the nose because Arthur doesn’t like it either, but he can’t help it. He isn’t even certain he has the words to say what needs to be said.

“Well?” Uther demands. “What sort of complication?”

“Agravaine duBois has a fiancée. She goes by the name Morgan Faye. She—”

“Yes?”

Arthur takes a deep breath.

“Father,” he says. “It’s Morgana. She’s here.”

The words sound so strange leaving his mouth.

“What?” For the first time in Arthur’s memory, Uther sounds like he’s been caught off his guard. “Are you absolutely certain of this?”

He hasn’t seen her, Arthur reminds himself a little wildly. He hasn’t seen the woman with his own eyes; Emrys could have been mistaken. He’s never met Morgana in person, after all, and how much could he possibly pick out from a high school photograph?

_Do you honestly think I would throw her in your face if I wasn’t sure?_

Merlin may have forfeited his trust a long time ago, but Emrys has always been a good agent. An observant one. Arthur trusts his eyes if nothing else.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m certain.”

There’s a long stretch of dead air on the phone. Arthur recognizes the quality of the silence as one of his father’s rare instances of thinking loudly, and he keeps quiet.

“You will proceed with the mission,” Uther says at length, calm and hard. Not unlike a king handing down a proclamation, Arthur has always thought. “Bring down Agravaine duBois. Bring Dr. Smithson home if possible.” There seems to be something amiss in the order of priorities, but Arthur bites his tongue. “And…bring in this Morgan Faye as well.”

Arthur had expected nothing less. “Understood.”

He’s about to hang up when Uther speaks again.

“Arthur,” he says. “This is family. See it through.”

Arthur swallows hard. “I know. I will.”

.

He waits until Gwen appears to be asleep before he leaves the hotel. It takes more doing than he was expecting, seeing as his not-wife spends a good twenty minutes pretending to be asleep before her breathing finally gains that deep, even quality that only true sleep and very practiced counterfeiters can produce.

He wonders, briefly, why she bothers faking. If it has something to do with lingering trust issues…well, he couldn’t blame her for it. Arthur’s read the mission report from Emrys’ extraction; he knows Gwen has been living on her toes for quite some time now, and Arthur hadn’t exactly made a sterling first impression. He should probably apologize for that at some point.

For now, though, he dresses quietly, arms himself, and leaves by the back door.

Agravaine duBois’ shipping yard is among the least remarkable of his acquisitions. Officially, it allows him to remove the middleman when it comes to exporting and importing supplies for his various businesses. Unofficially…well, it’s much the same story, with the added bonus that it allows him to cut down on any lawful oversight of what exactly is being shipped in and out. The staff is all handpicked, and a cursory examination of their employee history revealed that most, if not all, have some sort of military background.

In short, it’s the obvious place to look for any signs of suspicious activity.

For all of that, the outside of the shipyard is unassuming and not especially well guarded, which suggests either stupidity or a grand level of confidence. Neither option is particularly appealing.

The border of the yard is surrounded by a chain link fence, not too high to climb, but its top is wound with prison-quality concertina wire that looks sharp enough to tear even gloved hands to shreds. Besides, Arthur has always found clambering over the tops of fences unnecessarily likely to draw attention. He instead kneels down beside the fence and considers where would be the least conspicuous place to make an opening.

It’s nothing so blatant as a stick cracking or the sound of footfalls that alerts him to the other person’s presence. Nothing so material. It’s more of a feeling—an instinct, one Arthur can’t really describe or qualify, other than that it’s something he’s honed through years of doing this job and that it’s saved his life more than once.

He stands and turns, drawing his weapon in one fluid movement and aiming it directly at the intruder’s head.

Emrys puts his hands up and has the nerve to look annoyed.

Arthur takes a moment longer than necessary to lower his gun. “What are _you_ doing here?”

His erstwhile partner bypasses him to kneel by the fence where Arthur had been just a second ago. “Please. You think you’re the only one brilliant enough to work out that if Agravaine’s been moving uranium, the shipyard that _he owns_ is a good place to check?”

Arthur crouches next to him and refuses to let on that he’s irritated. That’s how it always is with Emrys—let him under your skin one time and you’ll never get him out again. “I told you before, I work better on my own. I don’t need you following me around.”

Emrys snorts, running his hands carefully over the chain links. “I’m not here for you, though it’s good to know the threat of a world-ending crisis hasn’t deflated your head any.” Apparently satisfied with whatever he’s found, Emrys pulls a knife out of his pocket and gets to work cutting through one link at a time. “In fact,” he adds, “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of my way.”

Arthur narrows his eyes. He moves back to his part of the fence, rechecks the links one more time, and pulls his ace out of his pocket. It’s a laser, small enough to fit in a pocket but with enough concentrated strength to slice through metal like it’s butter. Their technicians have been perfecting it for months.

He doesn’t allow himself the satisfaction of glancing sideways to see Emrys’ look of dismay when Arthur starts slicing through chain links at three times the rate of his knife, but he hears Emrys pause in his cutting and it’s almost as satisfying.

In a matter of a minute he’s got a hole wide enough to crawl through, and Arthur does so, only then giving into the impulse to turn around and smirk at a glaring Emrys.

“I don’t think my being in your way will be much of a problem,” he says.

“Oh, sod off,” Emrys grumbles. He’s stopped using that ridiculous American accent, Arthur notes with an unaccountable twinge of satisfaction.

Arthur’s turned around and is heading toward the building before Emrys comes to a decision, but whether he decides to follow in the path Arthur’s made or keep stubbornly hacking away with his belt knife, Arthur doesn’t care. He can handle this on his own.

He’s been doing it for some time now, after all.

The inside of the shipyard’s main processing building is a different story than the outside had been. Arthur begins to understand why security was so light on the grounds because every time he tries to turn a corner now, he nearly runs into a stone-faced security guard with a very large gun on his hip. Wonderful. At least it adds credence to the theory that anything here worth knowing about Agravaine’s business is inside of this building.

“Bit crowded in here, isn’t it?” Emrys murmurs next to him, and Arthur spares a moment to think the man is damn lucky Arthur didn’t shoot him in the face.

“Finally got through the fence, did you?” he mutters without turning around. They’re close enough that he can feel it when Emrys shrugs.

“And checked the rest of the perimeter. There’s barely anyone—”

“Outside, yes, I know. Everyone seems to be in here.”

“Right.” Emrys exhales. “So what are they protecting?”

Arthur holds up a hand and Emrys immediately goes quiet; they both listen as a pair of booted footsteps come closer to their hiding place. They appear to have ended up in something resembling a locker room for the shipyard’s employees, but Arthur’s wristwatch calls the time at a quarter past midnight. It seems an odd time for a shift change.

Keeping his breathing slow and steady, Arthur leans out just enough to see around the corner of the wall.

The man looks familiar, but he’s wearing a black uniform that as far as Arthur can tell appears to be standard issue for duBois’ employees—sharp and clean, no frills, and could probably double as a diving suit if necessary. The lack of scruffy clothing and evidence of a recent shave puts him off for a moment, but only a moment.

It’s one of the muggers from the ruins, from their first night in Rome. Not the ratty man, but one of his cronies.

Against his better judgment, Arthur’s eyes drift downward to the man’s hand. There’s a glimmer there, a sharp bright spot of gold as he turns the locker combination, and Arthur’s higher intellect promptly takes an unauthorized vacation.

He hears Emrys’ sharp intake of breath as Arthur moves silently out from behind the wall, walks up behind the man, lifts his hand, and brings it down hard on the side of the guard’s neck.

The man jerks, stills, and doesn’t fall over.

Arthur walks around to his front. The man’s eyes are closed. Arthur snaps his fingers a few times; the eyes don’t open. A job well done, then.

Emrys finally steps out from behind the wall.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks conversationally. Arthur ignores him in favor of grabbing the ratty man’s hand and examining it.

His heart sinks. The ring on the man’s finger is a wedding band, nothing more.

He’d been wrong. He’d misread the situation completely.

“Arthur? Are you even listening? What are—” Emrys stops. Arthur isn’t looking, but he can picture the look on Emrys’ face all the same as he looks between Arthur and the ratty man, pieces together the wedding band and Arthur’s empty finger (because Emrys would have noticed that Arthur’s mother’s ring was missing, Arthur knows that; there are things you pick up living with a person that don’t just vanish from memory, regardless of what happens afterward).

“Arthur,” Emrys says again, but it’s in a different tone of voice and Arthur can’t promise himself he’ll stay on target if he has to hear pity from _Emrys_ of all people, so he clears his throat and turns his attention to the now-open locker.

“Why change clothes in the middle of the night?” he asks, more to shut Emrys up than anything else. He’s not in the habit of thinking out loud anymore.

He reaches out and swings open the door. Emrys lets out a quiet whistle.

“That’s a bit ominous, isn’t it?” he says.

Arthur is forced to agree. Hanging inside the guard’s locker is a neon yellow suit—the kind worn when handling radioactive material—and a gas mask.

“I think that’s reasonable grounds for further investigation,” Arthur says after a minute.

“No argument here.” Emrys hesitates. “Erm. Is he…?”

Arthur follows his gaze to the man, who is still upright and still very much unconscious.

“He’ll be fine. I hit a nerve, that’s all—he’s effectively asleep, but he’ll wake up in an hour or two.”

Emrys stares. “You are really, really scary sometimes, you know that?” He shakes his head. “Well, let’s just hope nobody misses him before we’re done here.”

The man not being missed, however, starts to feel less and less likely the longer they investigate. Arthur keeps having to switch direction because yet another guard has appeared like some sort of hellish pop-up book, and the rooms they have been able to investigate have yielded nothing useful—just the usual offices and storage spaces. Emrys has brought along a bizarre little device he claims can detect the presence of uranium (“What, you thought your people had all the fun toys?”), but so far it hasn’t given any indication that there’s something untoward going on. If it weren’t for the first guard’s unusual second uniform, Arthur would be tempted to call the whole thing a wash and start over elsewhere.

Then, when they’ve gone down what looks like the same hallway for what feels like the eighth time, Emrys bats his arm to get his attention and points.

Arthur follows his gaze. “It’s a door,” he says under his breath. “So what?”

“We haven’t been in there,” Emrys whispers back. “I think the guard just changed.”

“The—”

“The guard,” is the impatient reply. “There’s been one in front of that door every time we’ve gone past it, and now there’s not. There has to be something in there.”

And before Arthur can say anything about stupid risks and the high probability that they actually have gone through that door because all of the damn doors look alike in here, Emrys is darting across the hall and putting his hand on the knob.

Arthur swears under his breath and follows him.

Emrys turns to him, triumphant. “It’s locked,” he says. “We’ve got to be onto something this time.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Wipe that smile off your face, we still need to get in there before the guard comes back.”

Emrys puts his hands up and then reaches for a lockpick. Arthur keeps his eyes and ears open; every instinct in him is screaming that they’re completely exposed here and that guards could come pouring in from both directions at any given moment.

It probably takes Emrys less than thirty seconds to get the door open, but it feels like days.

When the door closes behind them, they’re on a staircase. Arthur frowns and goes first. The lighting is dim down here and the walkway is narrow; it’s almost impossible to see what’s in front of him. He puts his hand on his holster as he edges down the stairs.

Arthur reaches the bottom and stops so suddenly that Emrys nearly walks into him.

“What are you—oh.” Emrys stops. “That’s a safe.”

Somehow ‘safe’ doesn’t seem to be the right word in Arthur’s mind. This is a fortress of gleaming metal that takes up an entire wall and likely cost the GDP of a small country.

Emrys claps his hands together, jerking Arthur out of his thoughts. “Well, we haven’t been shot yet, so it’s probably safe to assume there aren’t any other guards down here. I’ll get to work.”

“With what?” Arthur asks flatly, watching Emrys move closer to the safe and shrug his knapsack off his shoulders. “I’ll need to meet with my contacts in the city to get the kind of equipment that would—”

Emrys empties the contents of his knapsack onto the concrete floor and Arthur stops. Frowns. Emrys lets out a cough.

“Where did you get those?” Arthur asks, eyeing the array of safecracking equipment on the floor that most definitely was _not_ in either of their carryon luggage.

An impish smile. “You’re not the only one who’s been making friends in the city, Arthur.”

For the sake of both dignity and temper, Arthur chooses not to respond. He examines the safe instead.

“FN-2187,” he reads off the engraving in the side. “I’ve read about these. They’re the newest on the market, notoriously tricky to crack.”

Emrys shrugs, setting up his tools on the floor in front of the safe. “That’s why we’re Very Special Agents, isn’t it? Solving tricky situations?”

Arthur fights not to roll his eyes again. “Just get on with it. And try not to set off any alarms.”

“The FN-2187 doesn’t have alarms,” Emrys mutters, getting to work.

For all Arthur’s grumbling, he has to admit, Emrys has always been quicker at these sorts of things than Arthur has—lock picking, safecracking, and the like. Arthur has a definite edge in hand-to-hand combat and pretty much anything involving an engine, but they all have their strengths. Neither of them got into the agency by accident—or by nepotism, whatever some might like to think.

The longest he’s seen Emrys take to open a locked safe is fifteen minutes. When Arthur finally lets himself look at his watch, it’s been twenty.

He says nothing. There’s a time to be petty and a time to leave people to their jobs. Besides, Arthur is at least self-aware enough to realize that he’s twitchy because he’s effectively useless at this point, that they’re sitting in the basement of a building filled with enemies, and that their only exit currently is a single door at the top of a narrow flight of stairs that’s covered by at least one armed guard.

A series of thuds and clicks hits his ears a moment before Emrys’ call of, “Got it!”

Arthur looks up to see Emrys pulling the buds out of his ears and grinning. “I hope you were timing that,” Emrys adds. “For posterity and all.”

“Just open the damn thing,” Arthur says, but he feels considerably less like punching a wall now.

Emrys gives a mock bow and turns the wheel. The safe swings open.

It’s empty.

Arthur doesn’t even have time to contemplate the stupidity of it all before a buzzing noise begins emitting from Emrys’ pocket. Emrys reaches down, still gaping at the decidedly empty safe, and pulls out his ostensibly uranium-sensing device. Arthur doesn’t really know how the thing works, but there are red lights blinking and a little meter arm swinging wildly back and forth, and he’s guessing that’s significant.

“There was uranium here,” Emrys confirms, looking grim. “Lots of it.”

“They’ve moved the bomb.” Arthur feels like he’s swallowed ice water. “Close it back up. We need to—”

And naturally, because that is the way this night has been going, that’s when the alarm starts going off.

Arthur rounds on Emrys, who looks stunned. “I thought you said this thing didn’t have alarms!”

“Must be a new feature,” Emrys says weakly.

Forget the goons upstairs; Arthur really is going to kill him.

.


	6. Chapter 6

.

**_Chapter Six_ **

.

“Right,” Merlin says as bullets ricochet off the metal cabinet they’re hiding behind. Considering the way things are going so far, he just hopes it’s not filled with anything explosive. “So, this is bad.”

Arthur shoots him a look Merlin grew used to over the years, the one that says Arthur would happily strangle him if he didn’t have more important things to be doing. Merlin grins. He gets the feeling it comes off looking more than a little bit deranged, but what the hell.

It’s just been that kind of night. Sometimes you have them, no matter how much you’ve prepared—the kind of night where every possible thing (and some things you hadn’t even considered) seems determined to go wrong. And yes, all right, a good chunk of that is arguably Merlin’s own fault, but how was he supposed to know Agravaine would have already put modifications on the newest safe on the market? Who the hell is _that_ paranoid?

Agravaine duBois, apparently. Merlin is never going to underestimate that man again.

“What, no scathing crack about my brilliant powers of observation?” Merlin continues. Arthur is now looking past him, so Merlin moves on to the more pertinent question. “Do you even have any bullets left?”

“One,” Arthur answers. Merlin follows his gaze: he’s looking very intently at the giant glass window.

He turns back to Arthur sharply. “Arthur, please tell me you’re not going to—”

“Stay here if you want,” Arthur interrupts, and before Merlin can say anything else he stands and runs for the window, lifting his gun as he does so. Before Merlin’s disbelieving eyes he fires, once; the glass cracks—

And shatters completely when Arthur goes barreling through it.

Merlin sits there gaping like an idiot until he hears an unceremonious thud and a grunt from somewhere far below. How, he marvels, did he get saddled with a suicidal partner? How did he allow himself to end up back in this position?

A bullet whizzes by his head, practically close enough to shave off one of his eyelashes, which effectively jolts Merlin out of his existential mourning. He looks down at his own firearm, which has exactly no bullets left, tips his head back against the cabinet and lets out a groan.

Then he gets up and _runs_ across the catwalk and dives out of the open window.

He hits the dock below with an equally undignified thud, and he’s pretty sure he makes some kind of whimpering noise because hitting solid wood from several stories up fucking hurts, thanks.

“Don’t be such a child, Emrys,” Arthur grumbles from where he’s half-in half-out of a speedboat tied to the dock, fiddling with wires—oh for fuck’s sake, he’s trying to hotwire the boat. He’s trying to hotwire a boat while the bad guys with guns are literally still shooting at them and more are pouring out of the woodwork. Brilliant. Just wonderful.

Merlin hauls himself to his feet and scrambles over to the boat, taking a second to glance at Arthur’s work before he gets going on the rope tying the boat to the dock posts.

“If you cross that with the green one—”

“I’ll be fried, yes, thank you for your input.”

“I was going to say you’d have an easier time of it, but—”

“Will you shut up and let me do my job?” Arthur snaps. Merlin rolls his eyes and finishes untying the ropes.

“Suit yourself, but we’ve got about five seconds before they make Swiss cheese out of us and I really like this suit, so—”

For a second he thinks Arthur is actually growling at him, like an animal pushed past the point of endurance, but then he realizes it’s just the sound of the boat’s engine starting up. Arthur is smirking when his head surfaces; the familiar expression is partly infuriating and partly…well, not.

“Well?” Arthur asks. “Are you coming?”

“Prat,” Merlin mutters under his breath, but he’s already climbing over the side of the boat. Arthur floors the gas before Merlin’s feet have even touched the deck.

The boat races along the black water toward one of the open gates, which immediately forces Merlin to notice a problem.

“Arthur?” he shouts over the noise of the engine.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that gate is closing!”

Arthur swears. “Hold on!” he yells over his shoulder; Merlin barely has enough time to comply before the boat is swerving sideways so sharply Merlin’s pretty sure it’s going to tip over and that’ll be the end of them both. Instead it puts itself to rights and they hurtle toward the gate on the opposite side.

Except now there are enemy soldiers in speedboats coming at them as well. Of course. Merlin spares a glance at his useless weapon, and after a brief scan of the boat reveals nothing more dangerous than an abandoned flip-flop, shouts, “Can this thing go any faster?”

“Maybe if you got out and pushed?” Arthur snaps back. The gate in front of them is closing. Merlin knows without having to ask that they’re not going to make it in time. He’s opening his mouth to say that they should just cut their losses now and make for the third gate before that one begins to shut as well, but apparently Arthur had the same idea and apparently Merlin is an idiot because when the boat swerves hard a second time, he’s not holding on to anything at all.

The world flips upside down for a moment before Merlin hits the water, and then everything is just dark and wet and uncomfortably lacking in oxygen. There’s one long sickening moment where he’s not sure if he can figure out which way is up in time to reach the surface before he blacks out, but then his head breaks the surface of the water and he can breathe again.

The whole battle of the boats, amusingly, seems to have left him behind. He doubts Arthur has even noticed he’s been thrown overboard; squinting in the darkness, Merlin can see Arthur’s boat still racing around with four others on his tail. The third gate has almost closed. Merlin’s heart sinks.

Well, he’s not going to be of any use if he tries to swim closer to the action. Maybe if he can get to a control tower he can reopen one of the gates. Arthur can keep the bad guys going in circles for that long, surely.

Merlin swims to the opposite side of the docks and drags himself up out of the water. It’s a warm night, at least, thank the Roman weather, even if he’s pretty sure this suit is going to end up in the bin. Shame; he really does like this one.

He’s walking past a row of standard military issue trucks when the commotion over on the water attracts his attention. One of the guards appears to have got hold of a flamethrower. Somehow that doesn’t seem very sportsmanlike. Merlin almost wants to laugh at the spectacle, especially since Arthur has already maneuvered three of the four other boats into smashing into various walls and the whole affair is beginning to seem less James Bond and more like a late night comedy skit. _Round and round they go…_

They’re coming back around towards Merlin’s side. He climbs into one of the trucks—it seems as good of a hiding place as any—and waits for them to pass by. Honestly, this is turning into one of the more bizarre missions he’s been on. At least Arthur seems to be having fun with the boat—

The ground shudders under his feet just as he clambers into the truck. Merlin’s head whips up just in time to see Arthur’s boat, on fire, slam into the wall of the compound and splinter into a thousand pieces.

Arthur is nowhere in sight. Merlin’s mind goes curiously blank.

He can hear his heart hammering in his chest. It’s fine, he thinks. Arthur is just biding his time under the water until the last boatman lowers his guard. Arthur is fine. Anyone who can argue as exhaustively as he can must have the lung capacity of a soprano, even without the training they’ve both been subjected to.

_But if he was knocked out by the crash…_

Merlin sits stock still, his fingers starting to ache from gripping the seat cover.

_It’s only been a minute. He’ll resurface any second now._

_Any second now._

_Any…_

_Oh, dammit._

Merlin puts his hands on the steering wheel, turns the key that someone had been helpful enough to leave in the ignition, and floors the gas before he can think too hard about it.

The man in the last boat barely has time to look up in surprise before one of his own trucks lands on his boat, smashing it to bits. Merlin methodically rolls up the window as the truck begins to sink underneath the black water. He turns on the headlights.

It’s still hard to see in the murky water, which is slowly beginning to seep into the truck even with the closed windows, but if Merlin squints he can just barely make out a familiar form sinking like a stone. His mouth goes dry, his fingers fumbling for the window crank.

_Stay calm. If you panic, you’re both dead._

This isn’t the first time he’s needed that reminder, but he thought he’d done with it once he’d deserted. Funny how things can come back.

It’s a shock how cold the water is, especially after the warmth of the night air. It washes over Merlin in a freezing wave as he finishes lowering the window, but he squeezes himself out of the truck and swims grimly on.

Arthur is utterly slack when Merlin gets an arm around him to pull him to the surface. Merlin won’t let himself think about what that could mean. Not now.

He manages to haul them both over the lip of wall and back onto dry land. His arms feel like they’re burning by the end of it, but he barely notices that because Arthur doesn’t appear to be breathing.

“Arthur,” he says, which is stupid, because calling people’s names never seems to work in these situations. He says it again anyway. “ _Arthur_.”

Arthur just lies there, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes closed. Not moving, not breathing.

_Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck._

All the sophisticated spy training he’s had and it’s a first aid course from sixth year that Merlin remembers now, pinching Arthur’s nasal airways shut, leaning down, putting his mouth on Arthur’s and breathing air into his lungs. Pulling back, doing compressions, humming that stupid song under his breath to distract from the fact that Arthur _still isn’t breathing_.

_Come on, you stubborn prat. If you want to keep being a pain in my arse you have to be alive, and I know that’s your greatest joy._

_Come on, Arthur—_

It’s only when Merlin is leaning down for the fifth time and is exactly two seconds away from flat out panic that Arthur spits up water all over his face and sits bolt upright, coughing until his throat sounds raw.

Merlin sits there with water dripping slowly down his nose and waits for his heart rate to slow down.

 

As the coughing subsides, Arthur turns to him.

“What happened?” he croaks.

“You, er. You crashed the boat. And set it on fire.” Merlin clears his throat. “And then you tried to drink the river.”

Arthur’s eyebrows knit together. “I don’t remember hitting the water.”

“I think you hit your head. You were—you were sinking pretty fast.”

Something must creep into his voice at that (and Merlin notices, belatedly, that he’s slipped back into his regular accent without realizing) because Arthur looks at him—really looks. Merlin can see him taking in the fact that Merlin is also soaking wet, putting the pieces together and working out exactly what’s just happened.

Arthur’s spine stiffens. He wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.

Merlin flinches and looks away.

A minute passes in silence before Arthur speaks again.

“We should be getting back to the hotel,” he says. “We’ve already been gone too long. If Morgana tries to contact you…”

“Yeah,” Merlin manages. He clears his throat again and stands. “Yeah, we should go.”

He doesn’t offer a hand to help Arthur up. Arthur has already made himself crystal clear on the subject of Merlin’s help, and Merlin isn’t about to make this night any longer for both of them than it already has been.

.

The phone in Gwen’s room rings so shrilly she nearly jumps out of her skin, reaching out on instinct to pick it up before she remembers. She retracts her hand and waits for the ringing to stop.

It does. She waits five seconds, then ten.

The phone rings again. This time, she picks it up.

“Hello?” she says. Then, “Yes. I understand.”

Another few moments. Quietly, firmly: “I know.”

The voice on the other end tells her a number, and Gwen hangs up.

She stares at the elaborate gold-and-white patterns in the wallpaper until her eyes hurt.

Then she picks up the phone again and dials the number she’s been given. After a few rings, there’s a small click and a male voice speaks.

“Yes?”

Gwen takes a deep breath.

“Mr. duBois? This is Abigail Teller.”

“Abigail Te—how on earth did you get this number?”

“That’s not important,” she says. “I wanted to discuss something before our tea tomorrow—”

“Tomorrow? What are—”

“And I have a confession to make as well,” Gwen finishes.

Dead air as Agravaine pauses.

“You have my attention,” he says at last. Gwen’s mouth tightens.

“Good.”

.

The Vespa ride that follows their little outing at the shipyard is undoubtedly the most awkward one of Merlin’s life. Not that he’s gone on enough Vespa rides that he can really make a thorough comparison, but he’s pretty certain that even if he had, this would still rank in at least the top three.

Nothing is quite like being extremely physically close to someone (out of necessity lest your arse end up on the asphalt) when they’ve made it quite clear they don’t want to be anywhere near you.

As they near the hotel, however, it becomes immediately apparent that they’ve got a bigger problem.

“That does _not_ look like the kind of car that should be pulling up to a hotel this late,” Merlin observes.

Arthur swears under his breath. He’s already turning the bike. “Hold on.” He kills the engine, pulls a portable pair of binoculars (which, sorry, _what_?) out of approximately nowhere and tries to get a better look at the sleek sports car parked out in front of the hotel.

“It’s Morgana,” Arthur says under his breath. Merlin’s stomach drops. “Damn it, why is she here _now_?”

“I don’t know.” Merlin squints, trying to see if there’s any movement in the car. “I mean, I told her the name of the hotel but I didn’t think she’d show up in the middle of the night!”

Arthur lowers the binoculars and puts them back into place with an efficient snap.

“It’s too much of a coincidence. We have to assume she’s checking up on your alias, and since _Mr. Solo_ wasn’t present to take a phone call from the front desk…”

“She’s just going to knock on my room door?” Merlin says, incredulous. “Isn’t she supposed to be a millionaire’s fiancée? Isn’t that a little tacky?”

“Tacky’s got nothing to do with it,” Arthur replies, sliding sideways off of the Vespa. Merlin follows. “Morgana gets what she wants, however she needs to do it.”

If Merlin didn’t know any better, he would say the words were bitter. But something else has just occurred to him, and it means Arthur’s personal issues are going to need to take a backseat for the moment.

“Arthur,” he says under his breath, “when that alarm went off in the factory, would Morgana have gotten some kind of alert?”

Arthur goes very still. “Do you think she suspects you?”

“Well, it doesn’t look very good, does it?” Merlin snaps back. “I was already pushing the envelope with the whole ‘charming English rich prat nobody’s ever heard of’ shtick, wouldn’t you be suspicious?”

Arthur opens his mouth to answer, but something catches his eye and he straightens like a hunting dog catching the scent. “She’s getting out of the car.”

And if she gets upstairs before they do, she’s going to know Merlin isn’t in his room and probably hasn’t been all night. They exchange looks that would probably be panicked on any other people, and then they’re both running for the side entrance like their lives depend on it.

Which, now that Merlin is thinking about it, they sort of do.

They skid into the hotel lobby while the receptionist’s back is turned and bolt across the floor, barely missing Morgana if the sound of the front door being opened is anything to go by; they make for the stairs out of a long held habit that says elevators are neatly wrapped boxes of death for anyone who might need a quick exit. As they take the steps three at a time, Merlin catches a glimpse of sleek dark hair out of the corner of his eye. Morgana’s stopping to speak with the suddenly very attentive receptionist. Probably to bribe him into handing over Napoleon Solo’s room number, because in Merlin’s experience money doesn’t talk so much as it gets _other_ people to.

Why did they have to get rooms so bloody high _up_?

Arthur practically throws himself up the last set of stairs and Merlin is only a step behind, lungs near to burning, already turning left to get down the hallway to his room. Arthur turns right to make for the room he shares with Gwen—which is the exact point at which the grossly ornate gold elevator dings.

Arthur all but skids to a halt, turns on his heel and the next thing Merlin knows Arthur is half shoving him toward his own room, hissing “Move, move, _move_ ” in his ear like Merlin is going to pick _now_ of all times to start walking at a nice leisurely stroll.

He almost drops his room key before fumbling it into the lock. The sound of the elevator door opening hits his ears just as the pair of them fall through the door and Arthur shuts it behind them; Merlin’s hair is standing directly on end.

“Shit,” he blurts, because the very distinctive sound of high heels is clicking down the hall and he’s currently standing around wearing a suit that’s dripping wet. Because that isn’t going to look suspicious _at all_.

He looks at Arthur. “I need a towel.”

Arthur’s eyes widen like he thinks Merlin’s well and truly lost it. “This is hardly the time to be worrying about your _hair_ —”

“Just _get me a fucking towel,_ Arthur.”

To his credit Arthur does it, even if he’s still looking at Merlin like he’s out of his mind. Merlin, for his part, starts undoing the buttons of his suit jacket like he’s trying to set a world speed record. The clicking of the heels is getting closer.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters to himself, and it’s oddly calming, like some sort of mantra. He finally gets the jacket off and throws it into the trash bin. It was beyond repair anyway. Shirt next— _oh, fuck it, too many buttons_. He ends up more or less ripping it off his body, which he feels like he should be more impressed by. Maybe he’ll look back on this as a proud moment if Morgana doesn’t come storming in with her goons to kill them both.

“Here—”

Arthur has returned from the bathroom, a towel in his outstretched hand, and he’s…not looking at Merlin. So they’re back to being unable to make eye contact. Lovely. Merlin doesn’t even have time to be frustrated; the heels have stopped outside of his door. He has just enough time to yank his socks off, and roll the cuffs up on his trousers so they don’t show below the towel when there’s a short knock on the door.

Merlin glances back over his shoulder—Arthur has made himself blessedly scarce.

He winds the towel around his waist, takes a moment to get his breathing back to something like normal, and opens the door.

“Miss Faye!” he says, remembering his posh accent at the last possible second. At least it’s not hard to sound like he’s surprised. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

Morgana raises an eyebrow very slightly at Merlin’s state of undress—or maybe the fact that he’s present at all. He coughs like he’s embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, did you call ahead? I was in the shower. This hotel has wonderful water pressure.”

He wants to stab himself in the face—water pressure indeed, apparently he still hasn’t managed to shake that very civilian habit of rambling when he’s nervous—but Morgana is talking so he forces himself to pay attention.

“I did call ahead,” she says, “although on very short notice, which was terribly rude of me.”

It’s incredible how insincere rich people sound when they’re pretending to be contrite. Merlin waves her off. “Don’t worry about it. Was there something you wanted my help with?”

“You seem out of breath,” Morgana says, which is bullshit, because Merlin’s had plenty of practice acting normal when his lungs feel like they’re about to burn apart from the inside. Does she suspect something? She must, otherwise she wouldn’t be here. Her concern sounds genuine, but just like before, there’s something about those eyes…

It feels like she can read him like an open book, one in large print at that, so Merlin blurts the first thing that comes to mind that isn’t a complete lie.

“Yes, sorry, it’s just that I—I have company.”

Morgana blinks. It feels nice to be the one putting her off guard, for once.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

She recovers quickly, which shouldn't be as disappointing as it is. “I’m sorry for disturbing you, Mr. Solo. I expect we’ll be seeing one another again soon.”

“I can’t wait,” Merlin says cheerfully.

Morgana inclines her head once, graceful as a panther about to leap at an unsuspecting gazelle, before turning and walking away with perfect dignity, her heels _click-clack_ ing away down the hall.

Merlin waits until he sees her actually get into the elevator, until the doors close and the countdown begins to show that she’s descending floor by floor, before he closes his door and sags against it. He _is_ breathing hard now. He closes his eyes.

“Can we please never do that again?” he asks, and it’s a rhetorical question right up until he remembers Arthur is still here—if he hasn’t climbed into the air vents and escaped like the paranoid bastard that he is.

“Maybe if you remembered to keep the affairs of your alias straight before you go running off into dangerous and time-consuming adventures,” a dry voice says from the bathroom. Merlin holds back a sigh. _Definitely still here, then_.

“Correct me if I’m wrong—and I know you will—but weren’t you the one who went tearing off into that particular adventure in the first place?”

Silence. Merlin opens his eyes to see Arthur standing across from him in the dark entryway, his arms folded.

“I didn’t ask you to come along,” he points out. “There was a reason for that. I work better when I’m on my own.”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “I know you think that, Arthur, which is exactly why I knew you needed someone to have your back.”

Arthur’s eyes narrow as he takes a step forward.

“I do not,” he says, low and dangerous, “need your help.”

Scowling, Merlin pushes himself off the door. “Oh, right, because you were doing _so_ well on your own when I pulled you out of that water.”

“I wouldn’t have had to get _in_ the water if you hadn’t set off the alarm!”

“No, you would’ve just been caught by the guards after you spent four hours trying to open an FN-2187 like it’s a pharmacy wall safe!”

“You—”

They’re well inside of one another’s personal space by this point, and it’s apparently as good a time as any for Merlin to remember that he’s wearing a towel. It’s really hard to seem intimidating in only a towel, he thinks morosely, never mind that he’s got trousers on under it, but one does what one can with what they have.

What he has at the moment is a healthy does of righteous anger.

“You would’ve died,” he says, short and sharp. “If I hadn’t been there, you would never have come back.”

“I’ve done just fine without you these past two years,” Arthur replies. “So while your concern is _appreciated_ —” Ice, all ice. “I would prefer it if you let me do my work alone from now on. Good night, Emrys.” He pushes past Merlin to get to the door.

He’s going to leave, Merlin realizes. He’s actually going to leave now, when the wall between them is higher than the one currently splitting Berlin in half, and suddenly Merlin is sick of it all.

“Would you stop with this _Emrys_ shit?” he snaps. “I have a name, and you damn well know what it is, so _use_ it.”

Arthur’s back stiffens. He turns around to face Merlin again.

“I’m sorry, I thought we were on strictly professional terms now.”

“We are.” Merlin gestures angrily between them. “This? This isn’t professional. Nothing about this whole arrangement is professional, and you’re not helping when you spit in my face every time I try to—”

“To what?” Arthur interrupts, his voice hard. “To act like nothing has changed? Like this is all business as usual? Maybe one of us has been acting unprofessionally, _Emrys_ , but I don’t think it’s me.”

Merlin swallows. “We worked well together, once. Even when we hated each other we worked well together.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “Is that what you want? To resurrect our oh-so-productive working relationship? Because working together is rather difficult when you’re saddled with a partner you can’t trust.”

Merlin flinches.

“You know I didn’t want to go.”

Arthur doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “That’s a barefaced lie. You’d been angry with the agency for ages—and no, you’re not nearly as subtle as you think you are. It was always going to be just a matter of time.”

“I’m not talking about the agency.” Merlin forces the words out. “You’re right, I didn’t give a shit about them by the end. But I never wanted to—”

It needs to be said, he tells himself furiously; maybe he can’t say much but this _needs to be said_ if they are ever going to get past this.

“I never wanted to leave you behind.”

Arthur laughs, but there’s no humor in it at all. “Exactly what part of you disappearing without a word would make me think that?”

“I tried!” Merlin protests. “I tried over and over to get you to open your eyes—to see when they were going too far, but you didn’t want to listen!”

It’s not the full truth, and it’s not enough. He imagines he can hear the last thread of Arthur’s patience when it snaps.

“ _Because it was mad_!” Arthur shouts. “We got into this business to _help_ people, to save them, and you can’t save anyone when you’re too busy trying to stay one step ahead of an organization like mine. The only way to make it someplace you can work without feeling sick to your damn stomach is to keep your head down until you’re in a position to change things for the better.”

That had been Merlin’s thought too, once. Before he realized just how far Uther was willing to go to keep control. He shakes his head, frustrated.

“They’re too far gone, don’t you see that? They’ll never change now, not unless someone burns the whole thing down and starts over—”

“We’re fucking _spies_! Do you honestly think there’s a single agency in operation with less blood on its hands than my father’s? Do you think _yours_ is better?”

He takes a second too long to answer. Arthur rubs his hand over his mouth like he’s been struck dumb.

“You do, don’t you,” he says, more quietly now. “You really do think you’ve found someplace better.”

Merlin grits his teeth.

He’s not naïve. He knows no covert agency can do the work it needs to do without some nasty shit happening. They all deal with the devil; that shouldn’t be news to anybody.

Sure, in the two years he’s had Gaius for a handler he’s never been put in a position where he felt like he had to compromise his basic moral principles, but what is that really worth? As much as Merlin likes to tell himself the work they’re doing is helping people, he knows a lot of it is politics. Too much of it has nothing to do with _people_ at all.

Arthur has apparently decided to show mercy, which in a way feels worse than it would have if he’d kept pushing the issue.

Instead he says, “For what it’s worth, when you…when you left, I wasn’t surprised.”

Merlin’s head comes up fast. “What?”

“It’s funny, really,” Arthur continues. “I woke up that morning and you weren’t there, and it was like part of me had known that you wouldn’t be.” He clears his throat. “The situation was untenable from the start. I was expecting it, so if you’re carrying around some misguided guilt on that score—”

“How can you say that to me?” It feels like the air’s been knocked out of him all at once. “I never—I hadn’t planned any of it, how could you possibly know I was going to leave?”

The twist of a smile Arthur gives him is enough to break Merlin’s heart all over again.

“Of course I knew,” he says quietly. “I knew you.”

 _You don’t know anything_. _I never would have left if—_

But he can’t say any of that. He can’t do anything but watch Arthur turn and walk away, closing the door quietly behind him.

.

Gwen is playing chess with herself when Arthur comes back to the room, since this is evidently the sort of hotel where chessboards are provided. She looks up sharply when the door opens, relaxing when she sees it’s Arthur—soaking wet, but alive.

“Where have you been?” she asks, standing up. “I tried phoning Emrys’ room earlier but he wasn’t in either.”

“There was work that needed to be done,” Arthur says. Gwen frowns. _You know, I don’t think you could be any more noncommittal if you tried._

“What sort of work involved you getting back soaked?” she presses. “And in your clothes?”

Arthur doesn’t look at her. “You don’t need to worry. We’re not actually married, you know.”

Stung, Gwen takes a step back. “No, Arthur, we’re not married. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an ounce of curiosity or compassion.”

“I chased you down the first time we met,” Arthur points out, as if she’s somehow forgotten. “That wasn’t very compassionate of me.”

“And I don’t see why I should repay one bad turn with another.” Gwen looks down at her hands, which have twisted together. It’s a bad habit, she knows, one she hasn’t managed to break yet.

“I’m not a fool,” she says quietly. “I know neither of you are doing this out of the goodness of your hearts—I know the people you work for have a vested interest in making sure my father’s research doesn’t end up in the wrong hands—but all the same.” She forces herself to look up and be honest. “I’m grateful for what you’re doing to help find him. Both of you.”

Arthur looks like he has no idea how to respond to that, being thanked. It’s almost sweet.

“You’re welcome,” he says, awkward.

Gwen smiles. “You’d best dry off, I think. You won’t be very intimidating if you catch a summer cold.”

He nods and is heading for the bathroom when Gwen remembers why she’d been waiting up in the first place.

“I almost forgot—did Emrys tell you about Agravaine duBois turning up at the party today?” Arthur freezes. Gwen realizes she’s said something wrong and hurries to add, “Not that I imagine he would’ve had time, with you two having your ‘work’ to do and everything.”

“Agravaine was there?” Arthur asks, sounding like he’s trying very hard to keep calm.

“Yes,” Gwen says. “He noticed me, because I’m a new face obviously, and we got to talking about cars and, well—he said he’d like to talk more, sometime.” She manages not to cringe at the memory. Subtle, Agravaine duBois is not.

“He called the hotel while you were gone,” she continues. “He asked the desk for my room extension. He wants to have me for tea tomorrow.”

Arthur is staring at her. “And did you accept?”

She lifts her chin; Arthur might be twice her size and quite handy with all manner of firearms, but Gwen refuses to let that intimidate her. “I did. If we’re going to get my father back it will help to have Agravaine’s trust, or at least that much more access to his life.”

“Unless it’s a trap,” Arthur says, clearly trying to reign in his temper. “What if Agravaine has managed to figure out who you are? Did that ever occur to you, or to Emrys for that matter?”

“Emrys doesn’t know about the call because you’ve both been off doing lord-knows-what, remember?” Gwen returns, more sharply than she means to. “And even if he did know and disapprove as you obviously do, it wouldn’t change my mind. Of course I’ve considered that Agravaine might know who I am. But we’re all walking a knife’s edge here, aren’t we? We’ve been risking our lives since the minute we landed in Rome.” She swallows. “And I’ve got more to lose than that.”

She sees the exact moment when all the fight goes out of him. It’s the moment he realizes she’s right.

“It was well done,” he says at last, sounding only a little grudging. Gwen tries not to look too surprised. “You took the initiative and thought on your feet, and you’re not wrong.”

He rubs a hand over his face. “You should probably call Emrys’ room, let him know what’s going on.”

“He won’t be asleep?”

Arthur snorts. “Please. The idiot doesn’t sleep until he passes out wherever he happens to be sitting or someone actually drags him to bed.”

He stops short. Gwen bites her lip.

For two supposedly secret agents, Arthur and Merlin seem to be relying a lot more on Gwen’s supposed blindness than any subtlety of their own in this regard. And Gwen, for all she doesn’t have any government backing of her own, isn’t actually a fool. There’s a tension between the two of them whenever they’re in a room together—thick as butter; she feels like she could cut it with a knife sometimes.

Parliament might currently be facing pressure to decriminalize homosexuality, but even if it succeeds, Gwen knows people’s minds will always be more difficult to change than laws. Arthur must be exhausted if he’s letting details like that slip.

“I don’t know Merlin very well, obviously,” she says after a moment, picking her words carefully since Arthur sort of looks like he wants to run. “But I did get the impression that he needs someone to look after him.”

When Arthur manages to look her in the face again, Gwen is smiling—a small, awkward smile, she’s aware, but a smile all the same. “And if you don't mind my saying so, Arthur, it seems like you could do to have someone looking after you as well.”

Arthur goes a bit red around the ears. He coughs, says something about a shower, and promptly barricades himself in the bathroom.

For her part, Gwen returns to her chess game with a sigh. She seems to have forgotten whose turn it is.

.


	7. Chapter 7

.

**_Chapter Seven_ **

.

The receptionist outside Morgana’s office gives Merlin a false-bright smile when he tells her his alias’s name.

“Miss Faye is expecting you,” she says, and Merlin hides his surprise. Her stylish bob doesn’t move when her head does; the combination of hair and smile distract Merlin with thoughts of animated dolls. “You can wait inside the office. She should be in shortly.”

Merlin recovers his focus, nods his thanks, throws in what he hopes is a charming smile (it never hurts to collect more goodwill) and goes inside the office. The doll-like receptionist closes the doors behind him.

.

Arthur knows Gwen and Emrys have both been waiting for him to say that he doesn’t like this plan, which is the reason he’s kept his mouth shut on the matter. It doesn’t do for an agent to get predictable. Death typically follows shortly after.

All the same, they aren’t wrong: he doesn’t like this.

He can’t even pinpoint exactly why. Gwen meeting with Agravaine duBois is a perfectly reasonable next step in their investigation—actually it’s a better progression than they could have hoped for, and completely thanks to Gwen’s own initiative. Arthur doesn’t enjoy dealing with civilians on assignments, as a rule, but he can’t help being impressed by her. She has the makings of a good agent.

Which is why she’ll be fine, he reminds himself, and why this meeting will most likely go without a problem.

Engraving that thought firmly in his mind, Arthur burrows down a little further into the tall grass and adjusts his headphones and sound equipment. There’s not much to hear at this point, just the clinking of glasses and silverware as various employees prepare for guests, but Arthur can hear all that well enough. They’re just fortunate that the weather continues to favor them; it would be considerably trickier to do this if Gwen was going to be behind the walls of duBois’s fortress the entire time.

By the time he’d finished cleaning himself up after the incident at the shipyard, Gwen had already finished informing Emrys of the new plan. What Arthur hadn’t counted on, but probably should have expected, was that Emrys had his own ideas to add.

“He says he’ll make an appointment to see Agravaine’s fiancée, kill two birds with one stone,” Gwen had said, a crease between her eyebrows. “I didn’t even know he had a fiancée.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Arthur had replied, grim. “Did Emrys happen to mention how he’s going to contact M—the fiancée? Since she didn’t go about handing her contact information out to all and sundry?”

Gwen had offered an awkward shrug. “Apparently she has an office within Agravaine’s holdings. Emrys had me on hold for a minute so he could call room service for a phone book. ‘Divide and conquer’, he said. And—well, I’m assuming you’re going to put some kind of listening device on me, and you both don’t need to be there to listen through a pair of headphones.”

Arthur hadn’t liked it then and he doesn’t like it now—everything feels too neat, although the thought would sound like madness if he said it aloud—but it makes enough logical sense that he couldn’t overrule it.

“…so pleased you could join me today,” a smooth male voice comes through the headphones, and Arthur focuses, leans forward. A dark-haired man—Agravaine—is leading Gwen out to the table.

“It was kind of you to invite me,” she replies, smiling as she sits down.

Agravaine waits for the last waiter to pour their tea and disappear before he speaks again.

“I was told you would be able to assist me in a matter of some delicacy,” he says.

“I did promise as much,” Gwen answers. Arthur waits for her to elaborate on her longtime hobby of examining rare vehicles, but it doesn’t come. Agravaine continues.

“Yes, and I appreciate your offer. One of my men is working on a project we fear he won’t be able to complete in time. Not that he lacks the talent to do so, certainly, but he seems to be lacking in the proper…motivation.”

“And as I said before, I can provide it,” Gwen says, startling Arthur with the sudden cool tone of her voice, all demureness gone. “But first there’s something you should know.”

He can hear the eyebrow raise in Agravaine’s voice. “Oh?”

“Yes.” Gwen straightens in her seat. “I’ve been followed here by an undercover agent. He’s probably listening in right now, but I imagine if you alert your security now you might be able to catch him.”

Agravaine stands up so quickly he upends his chair, but his words are lost to the roaring in Arthur’s ears. He’s already moving on instinct, ripping the headphones off and shoving everything back into the bag he brought with him, even as he hears the piercing siren of alarms and the barking of very displeased dogs.

He gets to his feet and he runs, trying to stay out of sight of any stray duBois employees, trying not to think about anything other than the immediate threat. He won’t get far if he doesn’t compartmentalize now.

But two thoughts keep intruding, no matter how hard he runs, no matter how hard he works to keep them out.

One, the obvious: Guinevere has betrayed them.

And two: Merlin, off to meet with Morgana, may very well be walking into a trap.

.

The room Merlin enters is bright and spacious, painted white and soaking up the sunlight that’s pouring in from a set of double doors leading onto a balcony. He has no idea how Morgana gets any work done with a view like _that_ directly across from the polished mahogany desk—sparkling clear water dotted with the colorful sails of boats, a gorgeous blue sky, and all of Rome spread out below. It’s a view fit for an empress. He wonders, briefly, if Morgana ever pretends to be one—an empress surveying her kingdom. If she’s getting married to a man like Agravaine duBois, it stands to reason.

Merlin drifts aimlessly around the office, absently trying to find a window into Morgana’s head from the way she’s curated her space. Everything is ruthlessly organized, from the books on the shelves to the paperwork on the desk; Arthur was always the same way, which was something Merlin used to tease him about. He wonders if the tendency was something Arthur picked up from his older sister.

That’s about the only personal glimpse he can catch of this room though, and even that only because he has knowledge of Arthur to connect it to. Everything else is…predictable. Fancy art on the walls, the occasional sculpture that’s probably better suited to a museum; the kind of thing you’d expect a fan of antiquities like Agravaine to scatter around his living space and brag about at parties. The titles of the books are, likewise, both inscrutable and utterly expected—thick, dusty volumes in languages like Latin and Greek and, of course, Italian. Merlin can read most of them, but that doesn’t help.

None of it feels personal. None of it feels _real_.

Merlin has to resist the urge to check his watch for the fifteenth time. Typical Pendragons, always putting him on edge without appearing to put any effort into it.

He walks over to the balcony and stares out at the sea until he can feel his nerves receding somewhat. Out of the corner of his eye he notices a small glass table with several bottles of unidentifiable alcohol and a set of glasses. Merlin considers.

Well, one sip can’t hurt. He’s likely to crawl out of his skin if Morgana leaves him alone in here much longer; one sip will help his nerves without compromising his attention or his focus.

Merlin picks a bottle at random, pulling out the crystal stopper. He pours a finger, takes a sip and cringes. Scotch. He hates scotch.

“Are my drinks not to your liking, Mr. Solo?”

Silently cursing in every language he’s even remotely familiar with, Merlin turns around with a smile already on his face. “Miss Faye! So sorry, you don’t mind if I help myself?”

Morgana waves him off as she sits down behind her desk. “Please, by all means.”

Merlin still finds her politeness unnerving. Well, to be fair he finds everything about her unnerving, but the politeness has a special edge to it. He always feels like he’s being toyed with, and it’s not a nice feeling.

He takes another sip and clears his throat. “I wanted to apologize again for being…unavailable the other night, when you came calling,” he says. “I thought I should come to you this time to make up for it. We can talk business all you like.”

It’s fast becoming clear that Morgana is watching him, watching him in a way Merlin really does not like. It’s the panther thing again, some graceful forest cat waiting for its prey to drop dead in fear of its own accord. Her easy smile only makes it worse.

“What sort of business did you have in mind?” she purrs, like they’re playing a game and she’s hoping he’ll say something amusing.

Merlin refuses to let on that she’s getting to him. He keeps smiling. “Art and antiquities, of course. I couldn’t help but notice that statue in the corner—is that actually a genuine Rodin? I don’t have the sister piece in my personal collection, unfortunately, but I know the man who does. I could contact him for you if you like.”

He’s rambling, he realizes too late, letting his mouth run off without a leash. He hasn’t done that on a mission in years. It’s like he’s gone and gotten himself sloshed, only Merlin _knows_ he’s just had two sips of the scotch…

“Are you all right?” Morgana asks. “You look a little pale.”

Merlin thinks she probably has that look of concern on her face again, the one that would be perfect if not for the warning in his gut, but he can’t tell because her face seems to have gone all fuzzy.

Oh, bloody hell. Bloody _fucking_ hell, he’s really gone and stepped in it this time.

“If I didn’t know better, Miss Faye, I’d think you put something in my drink,” Merlin says, proud of himself for managing not to slur. A sliver of white flickers in his increasingly hazy vision and he knows she’s smiling.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s rude to drink someone else’s scotch without asking?”

“How did you even know I’d drink the scotch?” he retorts, because it’s better than focusing on the roiling in his stomach. “I bloody loathe the stuff.” Oh, there goes his accent as well, but he supposes it doesn’t really matter now.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Morgana scoffs. “I laced all of the drinks. It never hurts to be prepared—which is something you ought to know by now, Emrys.”

Merlin has to swallow twice before his tongue unsticks. “Ah.”

“That’s all you have to say?” She sounds like she’s about to start laughing. Merlin turns his back on the desk and manages a shrug.

“’m a bit preoccupied,” he mumbles. He walks into something that feels reliably like the sofa and collapses into it, remembering at the last second to set his glass down on the floor so he doesn’t drop it. No need to get shards everywhere on top of everything else.

“What on earth are you doing?” Morgana asks, still sounding incredulously amused. Possibly she’s noticed that Merlin is now feeling around for a pillow. He shrugs again, noting how his vision is beginning to go black instead of just fuzzy.

“I’ve done this before,” he informs her. “Only the last person used something that knocked me on my arse in two seconds flat. I hit the floor pretty hard and ended up with a concussion. Not something I really want a repeat performance of.”

He finds a cushion at last, bless interior decorating trends and useless bits of furniture, and shoves it under his head. Morgana is coming closer, but Merlin isn’t too worried. She wouldn’t drug him only to kill him in his sleep.

It’s what’ll happen when he wakes up that concerns him.

“If it makes you feel any better, you were doing quite well,” Morgana is saying. “It’s just your bad luck that I happen to be even more paranoid than you are.”

Fear yanks suddenly at his insides, sharp enough that Merlin is almost jolted into opening his eyes.

Gwen. Arthur. Have they been compromised too? Just how far does Morgana’s intel go?

“Sleep well, Emrys,” Morgana’s voice murmurs, close to his ear, and Merlin would dearly love to tell her to sod off and find someone else’s personal space to invade, but his consciousness slips away before he can manage it.

.

He wakes up and remembers at the last second not to open his eyes. To take as much stock of his situation as he can before anyone else realizes he’s no longer unconscious.

There are restraints around his wrists—leather, and worn, but when he tries to move his arm even a bit he finds them holding fast. His legs are likewise strapped to the chair he’s sitting in—a chair that is apparently made out of wood. Something about that is unnerving.

More unnerving, however, is the third restraint—the one across his forehead—and the odd sensation at his temples. Like small plastic circles have been glued there.

He shifts ever so slightly and feels wires trailing from the circles. It’s suddenly a lot harder to keep his eyes shut.

_That can’t be good._

“You can quit pretending to sleep, Mr. Emrys,” a wry voice says. “I’ve done this enough times to know when someone’s faking.”

Merlin opens his eyes. “Not faking,” he says. “Just trying to go back to sleep because honestly? This doesn’t look like fun.”

And it really, really doesn’t. The room is dark save for the painfully bright lamp shining directly in Merlin’s eyes, making it hard to see anything of his surroundings. Including the man speaking with the Cockney accent. The obfuscation is intentional, he’s sure.

Which makes it even more worrisome that the wooden table has been set squarely in his peripheral vision, where the light doesn’t blur it out. Where he can’t possibly miss noticing it.

The table is set with knives, but they’re not meant for eating. They’re meant for butchering—razor-sharp blades gleaming in the lamplight, some of them with edges serrated in order to rip through flesh and get straight to bone. Next to the knives are shears, the sort you use for pruning particularly stubborn rosebushes.

There are more tools, but Merlin forces himself to stop looking after the garden shears. Uther had placed heavy emphasis on the ability of his agents to withstand psychological pressure and interrogation, and one of the first lessons had been this: _Don’t do the enemy’s work for him_. Merlin can’t let on that he’s afraid, and the best way to do that is to not be afraid in the first place.

But he is. He’s fucking terrified.

The still-faceless man is bustling about somewhere a few feet away, moving things around, flipping switches. Merlin can hear the low hum of some machine being woken from sleep. But he can’t see it. Whatever is coming, he won’t be able to see it unless the man wants him to.

The thought is not comforting.

“Miss Faye doesn’t know about what I do down here,” the man is saying. “She’s not part of the family yet, so t’speak. She only wanted me to put you away somewhere until she’d figured out what to do with you.” Footsteps behind Merlin’s chair. He can’t turn around. “But Mr. duBois is my employer, see. Not her. Not yet.”

A stool is dragged over to the right of where Merlin is restrained. The man sits down.

Merlin still can’t turn his head, but he gets a decent look at the man regardless. And it’s not really what he’d been expecting. The man sitting down is thin, brown-haired with a wispy little mustache. He’s…ratty-looking is the best way Merlin can think to put it. Like a weasel. He doesn’t look overly threatening.

“My name’s Cedric, “ the weasel says genially. “And you’re the famous Emrys.”

Merlin manages a laugh that doesn’t sound too fake. “Famous? I must not be doing my job right.”

Cedric half-shrugs. “Famous in some circles. Not every day a high-profile agent ditches his own agency and then has the balls to up and join another. Only one ocean removed, no less! You don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Emrys, but I’m a fan.”

The potentially insane and definitely morally dubious torturer is a fan. Fantastic. Merlin can go ahead and check that one off the bucket list, then.

“If you’re such a big fan, how about getting me a more comfortable chair?” he says. Cedric shakes his head, apologetic.

“No can do, ‘m afraid. You’ve got a unique seat here, Mr. Emrys, make no mistake.” He actually pats the arm of said chair, like it’s a pet. “It sent over a hundred men to their graves, an’ that was before I got a hold of it. Been making improvements for a while now, but I haven’t had anyone to try it out on.” He grins, and it sends chills straight down Merlin’s spine. “Until now, anyway.”

_Oh, fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh **fuck**._

He’s sitting in an electric chair.

It takes a herculean effort to keep his breathing steady and unhurried, but Merlin makes it. He’s been trained for this, he tells himself fiercely. Trained to withstand pain and questioning and not break. He’s always known, logically, that every mission had a chance of ending up like this one—completely sideways, with him at the mercy of one sociopath or another.

But there’s a hell of a difference between knowing something logically and looking it in the face. There’s a hell of a difference between training and reality. And for all the prospect of torture and death was always lingering in the back of Merlin’s mind whenever he cut things too close, he’s never actually been caught before.

Leave it to Morgana Pendragon to break that record, he supposes.

Cedric is still rattling on. “Wasn’t easy, you know, getting this into the country. If it’d been just me I never would’ve managed it, but Mr. duBois takes care of his own.”

Merlin lets out a sigh, nerves abruptly receding. His mother always said it was better to rip the plaster off fast.

“Look, I don’t want to throw off your rhythm here, but can we move it along? Sorry, but I get enough monologuing from my bosses and I don’t really feel like listening to it from you as well.”

Cedric blinks. “Well, I guess if that’s the way you want it.”

Merlin tries to nod, but the strap against his forehead stops him. He can taste bile in the back of his throat but somehow he doesn’t feel as scared. Maybe his survival instincts are drowning in adrenaline or something. Cedric pushes himself off the stool and shuffles along to someplace behind the chair, starts fiddling with switches again. And, well, Merlin can’t help letting his mouth run off one more time.

“Just for clarification, are you going to be asking me any questions or is this solely for your benefit?”

There’s a thoughtful pause.

“No, this is pretty much just for me,” Cedric answers. “But if you feel like telling me something that’ll get me a raise from the boss, I’d be much obliged.”

He flicks another switch; Merlin hears it just before the humming noise intensifies and that’s the last coherent observation he has for awhile.

.


	8. Chapter 8

.

**_Chapter Eight_ **

.

Gwen has been spending a lot of time with spies recently, and she likes to think she’s picked up a few things.

Which is why, as Agravaine duBois leads her deeper and deeper into his—Gwen hesitates to call it a ‘home’—she’s trying to keep her bearings. Counting the turns they make, putting together a map in her head. Trying to make it so that if she needs to, she can find her way out of here.

She’s not at all certain that it’s working.

“I must say, Miss Smithson, I was surprised when you made contact with me,” Agravaine is saying as they walk down yet another dank corridor. “More surprised still when you offered your true identity instead of that carefully forged alias. You have nerve, I must give you that.”

“I don’t need your approval or your platitudes,” Gwen replies, making sure to look him straight in the eye as she says it. Men like Agravaine approve of boldness and showings of strength, no matter how futile; she’s starting to think it’s all they understand. “Show me to my father and I’ll make sure he finishes your project on time.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” They stop before a door that looks no different from any of the other doors they’ve walked past, except that this one has two guards stationed in front of it. Agravaine waves them away as he puts a key in the lock. “Quite something, the way you threw your companion under the proverbial bus. That might have been the most surprising thing of all. I wouldn’t have thought you had that in you.”

She looks straight ahead. “With all due respect, Mr. duBois, you don’t know me at all.”

He laughs. “I suppose you’re right.”

The lock clicks. The door opens. Agravaine waves her into the room.

“I have a visitor for you, Doctor,” he says, but Gwen has stopped listening. Her father looks up from his workstation and she sees on his face the same shock that’s no doubt spreading over her own.

“Gwen?” he whispers.

Tears spring to Gwen’s eyes before she can stop them. She opens her mouth—and immediately shuts it, remembering where they are. She refuses to show any more emotion in front of Agravaine and his thugs—but it’s been _months_ —

“I’ll give you two a moment alone.” Agravaine duBois sounds almost amused, the sadistic bastard, but he waves a hand and her father’s guards follow him out. Gwen doesn’t doubt that they’re all waiting right outside of the only door; there are no windows in this room. How long has it been since her father has seen daylight?

The door closes again, and that’s all the permission Gwen needs to run into her father’s arms.

“Gwen, my Gwen, why are you here?” Thomas Smithson never cries, but she can hear the tears in his voice as he hugs her tightly. “I thought you were safe, I thought if they hadn’t found you by now then they never would.”

“They didn’t find me, Dad,” she says into his shoulder, her voice wobbling and thick. “I came to them.”

He pulls back then, though his hands stay firmly on her shoulders. His eyes are wide and horrified.

“Why?” he asks. “Why would you risk yourself like this?”

Gwen wants more than anything to explain, explain herself to one person who might actually listen, but the door is opening again behind them. Gwen steps out of her father’s arms and clears her throat.

“Which is why you must do as Mr. duBois asks,” she says, adopting a pleading tone. “If you finish his project then we can finally go home. All of us, as a family.”

Her voice cracks and she doesn’t even need to fake it. Her father’s face falls, but he nods, glancing over her shoulder to where Agravaine must be standing. Gwen wonders if he understands.

He doesn’t need to, she tells herself. All he needs to do is trust her. Otherwise she will have done all of this for nothing.

.

The pain abruptly stops, which Merlin fucking hates, because he immediately dreads its return. At least while it’s happening he can’t anticipate, can’t think beyond the burning agony that obliterates all conscious thought.

“You’re holding up pretty well, Mr. Emrys. Must say, I’m impressed.”

Merlin’s breathing hard, but he still tries to give a snarky response because the day he can’t manage that fundamental bit of his personality is the day he’s well and truly fucked.

But he finds he can’t get the words out around the rawness of his throat. It’s probably understandable—he’s been doing quite a bit of screaming in this charming basement-lair-thing—but it’s still disheartening.

_Guess that means I’m fucked, then._

Cedric is still acting like they’re having a friendly conversation. “I did this during the war, y’know. Loads of times. The government needed me then, but as soon as we got our so-called ‘victory in Europe’…” He mimes an explosion. “Disavowed me, all of them. Probably would’ve gotten rid of me altogether if I hadn’t disappeared first. Does it make more sense now, why I admire you?”

Merlin closes his eyes and breathes evenly, trying to quell the nausea.

“While I was enlisted I figured out that the Germans had some brilliant ideas,” Cedric continues. “But they were limited by scope. Certain groups they found—what’s the word? Repugnant? But I like to think of myself like an artist, and true artistry doesn’t discriminate. Pain’s the same for everyone.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Merlin rasps, opening his eyes. “Get on with it. I’d rather have my brains fried some more than keep listening to your garbage.”

Cedric actually looks offended. “I thought you of all people would understand—”

“Why?” Talking hurts, but it’s better than listening to this shit. “What the hell makes you think I could ever relate to you?”

“Because you know what it’s like to be unappreciated!” Cedric hisses. “You know what it’s like to be pushed out by an organization that doesn’t recognize your skills.”

Unbelievable. Merlin closes his eyes again, feeling exhausted.

“That’s not why I left,” he says. “And I’ve got nothing else to say to you.”

“Fine,” Cedric mumbles, and Merlin can hear him vacating the stool. His pulse starts to leap under his skin; he knows what’s coming now, but he keeps his eyes shut and his mind blank. He can handle this. He can do this on his own.

He doesn’t have a choice.

A minute passes, then another. The last switch doesn’t get flipped. Cedric lets out a dramatic sigh, and the next Merlin knows he’s flopped back down onto the stool.

“See, now you’ve gone and made me curious,” Cedric says, sounding annoyed about the whole thing. “I always wondered what could make a good agent betray his own. You’re telling me it wasn’t lack of appreciation, so what was it? Morals? Shit pay?”

Merlin lets out a cough. “Well, the pay was definitely shit, I’m not going to lie.”

“So it was money then?”

“No. It’s a long story.”

“Humor me.” Merlin opens his eyes in disbelief, but Cedric is still sitting there, leaning forward and looking for all the world like he actually wants to hear Merlin’s life story. “It gets lonely down here, just me and the machines,” Cedric explains. “And I don’t get near as many lab rats as I used to, Mr. duBois trying to keep a low profile and all. I don’t want to kill you too quick, Mr. Emrys. So let’s chat.”

“Are you serious right now?” Merlin asks, but his incredulity is met with an earnest nod. Figures he’d get the torturer who wants to talk him to death before he finishes turning his brains to soup.

Merlin is faced with a quandary. The possibility of his being rescued is very, very low, especially if Arthur and Gwen have also had their cover blown, so at this point he’s basically only got to choose whether to die now or shortly hereafter. And it’s going to be a long, painful death either way. What a shit choice.

Part of him wants to get it over with as quickly as possible, shut his eyes and his ears and let Cedric grow tired of waiting for Merlin to cooperate. Merlin’s sad excuse for a story isn’t anyone’s business. Certainly not a weaselly torturer in some long-forgotten basement.

But part of him is exhausted—tired of arguing and fighting and constantly looking over his shoulder, waiting for someone to stab him in the back.

He’s particularly tired of that part of him that believes he’d deserve it.

Fine, he thinks. Let someone else have his story. At least then he can die knowing someone else understands why he did what he did.

After all, it’s not like Arthur will ever know.

Merlin closes his eyes again. It’ll probably be easier that way.

“Fine. Why the hell not. Get comfortable.”

.

It went like this:

There’d been a thing. A thing in Bangkok, and then a thing in Beijing, and also a thing in Los Angeles (and another thing in Budapest, but they’d still been arguing over whether or not that counted right up until the last time they spoke).

And at first it had only been a bit of fun, right, but things rolled downhill from there and before Merlin had known it, it had gone from being a series of things to being a _Thing_.

It wasn’t like he’d meant it to happen. He’d never meant for any of it to happen. He’s not actually a complete idiot, no matter what certain other personages might say, and he’s not sheltered either. He knows what happens when you make personal connections on the job; he’d known that even before the day he looked at Arthur and realized he wanted to kiss him a good bit more than he wanted to punch him in the mouth.

And if that had been the end of it, then fine. Merlin had had hopeless crushes on straight men before, and he was sure that he’d end up having more hopeless crushes in the future if he managed to live that long. If this particular crush had been allowed to shrivel up and die like all of the other ones, it would have been fine.

But then Arthur had to go and maybe not-hate him back, and that was when everything went to hell in a hand basket.

He could blame Arthur, maybe, if he really wanted to; he could blame him for being surprisingly open at the moment Merlin’s better judgment had really needed him to be cool and closed off and collected, or maybe he could blame him for having hidden depths of sweetness and general, you know, _humanity_ instead of just being the relentlessly effective agent with the sharp tongue that Merlin had thought he could be content to hate. He could hate someone and still sleep with them; even that would have been a less dangerous proposition than what ended up happening, which was that Merlin sort of fell in love with him.

If he’d hated Arthur, maybe it would’ve been easy to leave. Merlin was well aware any attempt would probably be tantamount to suicide, given Uther’s propensity for turning any situation into an opportunity to Set An Example, but he might’ve tried anyway, before Arthur.

After Arthur…

The thing you had to understand was, Arthur was _so much better_ than his father. In pretty much every way that Merlin could discern. He was brave and loyal and _good_ in a way that Merlin thought couldn’t exist in their line of work; he made Merlin want to hope even though he knew it was a bad idea. More than once Merlin had found himself entertaining thoughts of what might happen if/when Uther finally decided to retire and passed control of the agency over to his son—if things might get better, good enough even for them to look in the mirror without feeling that ever-present twinge of disgust.

Merlin couldn’t leave then. More surprising was the slow realization that he didn’t want to anymore, not when there was something concrete and hopeful to work toward. Arthur was still stubbornly loyal to his father and their organization, but surely if Merlin kept pushing, kept trying to open his eyes…

And then it’d all come crashing down.

He still doesn’t know how Uther found out about them. It doesn’t really matter in the end; it was probably their own fault for thinking anything could fly under Uther’s radar. One minute Merlin had been in his own flat, wondering if he should try to cook something for when Arthur came over or just get fish and chips somewhere and admit defeat; the next minute he’d turned around and Uther Pendragon had been sitting on his sofa.

He’d dropped the glass in his hand. Obviously. Some things even spy training doesn’t adequately cover.

“I have become aware of the nature of your relationship with my son,” Uther had said—no greeting, no introduction, no chance for Merlin’s heart to recede from his throat. “I would have it stop.”

Merlin finally managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know what—”

“Do not insult me by feigning ignorance, Emrys,” Uther had said, and it was only then that Merlin had noticed his fists, white-knuckled where they sat in his lap. The sight made every last hair on the back of his neck stand up. “You may have somehow deluded Arthur into falling prey to your…abnormality, but I am not so easily tricked.”

Sudden fury had drowned out his fear, but Merlin managed to keep his voice steady. “I didn’t talk him into anything. I didn’t _trick_ him into anything. And with all due respect, sir, what two adults do behind closed doors shouldn’t be anyone’s business but their own.”

Uther pulled a gun from his waistband and let it sit, casually, across his knee. Merlin stopped talking; any more words turned into so much white noise in his head.

“You misunderstand the purpose of my visit,” Uther had said, perfectly calm. “Your influence is making my son weak. He does not question my orders, but he wants to; I can see it in his eyes. I begin to wonder if he has the stomach to do what needs to be done.”

“Maybe he thinks there’s another way,” Merlin had croaked, refusing to move his eyes from Uther’s face. Refusing to look at the gun sitting between them.

“But Arthur does not control this agency,” Uther had replied. “I do. I am the one who decides which ‘way’ is best. The moment soldiers begin to question their general, an army falls apart. We are the last line of defense against some of the most dangerous criminals the world has ever seen. We cannot afford to fall prey to dissent.”

Merlin swallowed. Twice. “What do you want?”

Uther’s face had been unyielding. “You will leave. Disappear. You will not return to the agency headquarters, you will not return to this building, you will not engage with any of your now-former comrades. Including my son.”

Ice trickled into his veins as Uther spoke, making it hard to think, harder to form words. “You can’t—”

“You are well aware that I can. I confess to feeling some regret over this decision—your methods are unorthodox and your commitment questionable, but you have been an effective agent.” His voice hardened. “Now you are a liability. One that I wish to see removed as quickly as possible.”

“And the rest of the agency?” Merlin demanded. “What will you tell them?”

Uther spoke as if the answer were obvious. “That you are a deserter. Given your previous record with authority figures, I doubt any will have difficulty believing it.”

“Then they’ll come after me.” Flat and hollow.

“Only if you are foolish enough to stay on this continent,” Uther said. “Your previous service has earned you this advance warning. I will not be so generous if ever I am forced to look at your face again. You have until morning.”

It was useless trying to fight it. Merlin knew that, but he couldn’t stop himself asking.

“And if I stay?”

Uther’s lip curled. “Surely you don’t need to ask me that question.”

And then he had stood, stowing the gun away once more, and was gone as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Merlin doesn’t tell Cedric anything after that—not how he’d found he couldn’t move after Uther’s departure, how his mind seemed to have gone curiously blank, as if it’d been wiped clean; how it felt like a stone had formed in his stomach, cold and hard and final. He’d wondered, sickeningly, if that was what acceptance felt like.

Vaguely he’d become aware of a new sound—a key fitting itself in the lock of his door and jiggling around.

“I don’t smell anything burning,” Arthur announced as he pushed into the room, shutting the door behind him. “Does this mean you haven’t made good on your threat to cook dinner yourself?”

And for a moment, a long selfish moment, Merlin had wondered what would happen if he told Arthur everything. Laid it all out and let him decide what he wanted to do. What _they_ should do.

“Merlin?” Arthur was frowning. “Is everything all right? You look…odd.”

But he’d known the answer as soon as he’d thought of the question: it didn’t matter. Whether Arthur sided with him or with his father, he’d still be left with the feeling that he was betraying someone’s loyalty, and that would destroy him—eat away at him bit by bit until there was nothing left.

Merlin would rather rip himself in half than cause that.

He took a deep breath and put on a grin.

“Are you insulting my face, Arthur Pendragon? Not very gentlemanly of you.”

The worried crease between Arthur’s eyebrows had disappeared in favor of a smirk. “Well, I could insult your ears, but I was raised never to aim for the low-hanging fruit.”

“Just for that, I’m not going to cook for you after all.”

“Ah well. I suppose we’ll have to make do with food made by people who actually know what they’re doing.” They were close now. Arthur’s smile had dimmed a bit. “You’re certain you’re all right?”

Merlin had kissed him instead of answering. It was easier than lying to him again.

.

If they’d hated one another, then maybe Merlin wouldn’t have felt so much wrenching fucking _guilt_ after he’d left Arthur in his bed. Maybe he wouldn’t have walked around for weeks and then months feeling like he was carrying shards of ice and gunmetal balled up tight behind his ribcage; maybe he wouldn’t have woken up constantly from nightmares of Arthur getting his stupid arse killed because Merlin wasn’t there to have his back.

(He’d had those nightmares before, he’d been having them for months before he even left the agency, but the difference was that back then—when he bolted upright in bed, sweating and shaking—he could look to his right and see Arthur fast asleep, not bleeding out or drowning or doing anything except snoring lightly. Merlin could check his breathing and eventually his own would even out and he’d be able to get back to sleep.

He didn’t sleep through the night for almost a year after he left.)

And yeah, he could blame Arthur for all of it—Merlin is damn good at arguing; he’s been told this loads of times and mostly by people who sound like they want to ram his arguments back down his throat with unseemly prejudice, so he’s pretty confident he could construct some kind of narrative that would make the whole thing Arthur’s fault.

Or, failing that, something that would make it seem like the whole thing with Arthur not as good as Merlin was making it out to be. Maybe Arthur was just a mindless Uther clone. Maybe he was never anything more than that. Maybe Merlin had overestimated him. Maybe all the lingering fondness was just a product of nostalgia for a moment in his life that hadn’t seemed so empty.

He’s not sure he could manage it, though. And even if he could, Merlin doesn’t think he would want to. He’s done Arthur enough disservices already. The least he can do now is give his memory the justice it deserves.

.

“Wait—are you telling me that’s _it_?”

The outrage in Cedric’s tone surprises Merlin into opening his eyes. “Er…”

“The infamous Emrys got tossed out on his arse because he was fucking around with his boss’s golden boy? Didn’t even have the balls to leave on his own terms? Are you _shitting_ me?”

Cedric actually stands up, nearly toppling the stool backwards with the force of it. He looks pretty wretched, now Merlin’s paying more attention—like one of those Beatlemaniacs who’s just found out John or Paul has a girlfriend. Betrayed, even though they’ve no right to it. Merlin wonders if he ought to be annoyed and decides he doesn’t have the energy for it at this point.

“I said it was a long story,” he says. “Not a great one.”

“It’s bloody _boring_ , is what it is,” Cedric snaps, waving one arm expansively. Merlin rolls his eyes even though that hurts too.

“Oh, I’m sorry, maybe you should pick someone more _interesting_ for your fucked-up experiments next time!”

“You—” Apparently frustrated beyond his capacity to form words, Cedric storms back to his worktable, which sets Merlin’s pulse to jumping again. _This is fine_ , he tells himself, _you know what’s coming this time, don’t scream, don’t give the bastard the satisfaction—_

There’s a scuffling sound from behind the chair. Merlin tenses—if Cedric is switching tactics on him…

“Merlin?”

He gapes.

“ _Arthur_?”

It’s not a hallucination. Arthur is standing there, the backlight making his expression impossible to read, but real and solid.

“What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?” Arthur mutters, going to work on the straps around Merlin’s wrists. Relief is threatening to turn Merlin’s limbs into jelly.

“You’re not looking so great yourself,” Merlin manages, because now that Arthur’s shifted he can see the scratches on his face and the tearing in his clothes. Arthur’s jaw tightens. One of Merlin’s arms comes free.

“I had to make a quick escape,” he says. “I’ll explain later, but suffice it to say that our situation has gotten a lot more complicated.”

“Brilliant.” Both of his wrists are loose now. Arthur still starts to undo the strap across his head though, for which Merlin is grateful, because he doesn’t think he can handle basic motor function just yet.

“I take it things didn’t go well with Morgana,” Arthur says, grim.

“Not really, no,” Merlin replies. Then, “But she didn’t mean for me to end up down here. I’m not sure what she _did_ want to do to me, but that weasel Cedric said Morgana doesn’t know this place even exists.”

He isn’t really sure why he’s defending the morals of a defector, and a traitor’s fiancée at that, but something in Arthur seems to loosen at the words, so Merlin takes it as a good thing. He tries to clear his throat so that he sounds a little less like a talking corpse.

“Where is Cedric, anyway?”

“Incapacitated,” Arthur says flatly, wrenching at the straps around Merlin’s ankles. “Not dead.”

 _But not for lack of wanting._ Merlin remembers that tone of voice very well, from missions that came too close to going wrong.

The last of the restraints comes loose, causing Merlin to make a spectacularly ill-advised attempt at standing up. It works for about half a second before his legs give out and only Arthur’s fast reflexes keep him from hitting the floor. He’s very solid and very warm and bloody _hell_ , Merlin hates this.

“I hate this,” he says, the sound muffled by Arthur’s shoulder. “Can we kill him now?”

Arthur makes a huffing sound that might almost be a laugh. It ruffles Merlin’s hair. “He could have important information. Besides, we don’t just go around killing people because they happen to be terrible people. That’s not part of the job.”

“It should be,” Merlin mutters, but he doesn’t really mean it and Arthur knows that. He makes another effort to hold himself up and ends up needing to brace himself against Cedric’s worktable, which makes his skin crawl a bit, but it’s better for his concentration than being in such close proximity to Arthur.

Particularly when Cedric is standing up unconscious, which is a mood-killer if Merlin ever saw one.

“What are we going to do with him?” he asks.

Arthur examines the man, his face grim.

“Guinevere and I had a run-in with him and his cronies our first night in Rome. We’ll need to find out if he knows anything helpful,” he replies. “But he’ll need to be restrained before he wakes up.”

Merlin looks pointedly at the chair, but puts his hands up when Arthur’s eyes narrow.

“Not to use it, obviously, but you can’t deny it has restraining equipment in spades.”

Arthur can’t really debate the logic of that, so together they maneuver Cedric’s unconscious form into the chair and strap him in. And if Merlin feels a grim sort of satisfaction in turning the tables like this, well, he’s not proud of it, all right?

“I need to speak to you,” Arthur says once they’re done. “Outside; I don’t want him listening in.”

Merlin cringes. “Can he do that? You know, like this?”

“Our luck hasn’t been the best lately. I’d rather not risk it. Come on.”

Merlin follows him out into the hallway, managing to trip over a bloody wire on the floor on the way out, because it turns out that having your brain fried really has some adverse effects on your ability to coordinate limbs. Wonderful.

Arthur closes the door behind them, and Merlin takes advantage of his momentary distraction to talk first.

“What happened to you? Where’s Gwen?”

Arthur’s jaw is tight. “The last time I saw her, Guinevere was still with Agravaine.”

Merlin’s stomach drops. “You _left her with Agravaine_? Have you lost your—”

“ _Merlin_.” He hasn’t heard that tone of voice in a while. “Guinevere betrayed us.”

The words don’t compute. “What?”

“She betrayed us,” Arthur repeats, slow and deliberate. “She told Agravaine that she had an agent following her, he alerted security, and I spent a glorious hour trying to get off the property without being shot or eaten by dogs.”

“Gwen wouldn’t.” The need to sit down is fast becoming more of an urgent demand than a polite request. “Agravaine kidnapped her father, she’s got no reason to—”

“He might have got to her somehow,” Arthur allows, eyeing Merlin like he’s aware of just how close he is to hitting the floor. “All the same, we can no longer count on her as an ally.”

Merlin rubs a hand over his face, Gwen’s smile flickering in his mind. “There has to be more to this. It doesn’t make _sense_.”

“Being so trusting doesn’t do you any favors,” Arthur says, and Merlin just does not have it in him to have that argument right now. “Come on, I’ll see if I can speed along Cedric’s return to the world of the living.”

His hand is on the doorknob when Merlin thinks of one more thing.

“Wait—” Arthur looks up questioningly. “How did you find me? I mean—I don’t even know where I am.”

Arthur’s mouth curls up, an unexpected little smile. He reaches over and tugs at Merlin’s wrist.

“You didn’t find all the bugs,” he says. “I told you, you’re slipping.”

Merlin doesn’t understand at first (he blames the aforementioned brain-frying). Then he twigs.

“The watch? When the hell did you bug—”

“That’s not important.”

Merlin raises an eyebrow. “How did you know I wouldn’t take it off?”

It’s a challenge, and admittedly a poorly timed one—Arthur had given him the watch as a jab after Merlin turned up late for their first joint training session. Years later and Merlin still hasn’t quite broken the habit of wearing it.

But Arthur says nothing of that, just clears his throat and turns back to the door. He frowns. “Do you smell that?”

Merlin almost says something sarcastic about Arthur and his tendency towards avoidance of any given confrontation, but then he smells it too: smoke. They exchange startled looks before Arthur yanks open the door.

Cedric’s workroom is on fire, his desks and his instruments blazing violent orange and yellow. Merlin bolts to the chair at the eye of the storm, expecting to see Cedric thrashing around or trying to signal for help, but as he edges closer he sees why the torturer isn’t moving.

“He’s dead,” he says in disbelief, looking up to meet Arthur’s eyes over the chair and raising his voice. “No pulse, and his skin’s smoking—I think he was electrocuted.”

“There’s a wire yanked out here,” Arthur yells back over the crackling of wood and flame. “The chair must have short-circuited.”

Merlin remembers tripping on his way out of the room and shudders. He wonders if he'll feel guilty later, or not, and which would be worse.

“Come on,” Arthur is yelling, already turning to get out of the room, and Merlin would follow if it weren’t for the gold glint in his peripheral vision.

_Is that—?_

Merlin doubles back, grabs the small object that gleams in the firelight and sticks it in his pocket, and runs (well, hobbles quickly) out of the room before Arthur can notice he’s lagging. Arthur slams the door shut behind them.

“Well,” Merlin says after a moment. “Would you call that whole episode an unequivocal disaster? Because I’m tempted.”

“You’ll find no argument here,” Arthur replies, which is a first. Merlin leans against the wall and tries not to wince too obviously, his body still feeling the aftereffects of that damned chair.

“So what’s our next move? You said Gwen went to meet Agravaine like we planned, but he can’t be thick enough to keep a nuclear warhead in his own basement?” Another thought occurs to him. “Wait, where even _are_ we?”

“An abandoned warehouse, a few miles outside of the city,” Arthur says. “As for Guinevere and Agravaine, the last her tracker showed up on my radar was at the docks nearest duBois’ property. I assume she remembered to take the tracker off at that point; either that or it got too wet to function.”

“The docks?” Merlin repeats, his heart sinking. “So they’re leaving the mainland?”

Arthur nods, his jaw tight. “It would appear so. Presumably they’ve gone to wherever Dr. Smithson is being kept, and by extension the warhead, but we have no way of knowing where that is.” He stops. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless we go to Morgana.” Arthur has a peculiar expression on his face, caught somewhere between determination and nausea. “Convince her somehow to give up Agravaine and the warhead’s location.”

Merlin bites back his instinctive reply, which is that Morgana didn’t strike him as the type to give up anything—more the type to talk circles around you until you forgot what your objective was in the first place—because she’s Arthur’s sister, and Arthur would know that better than anyone.

And because she’s Arthur’s sister, he has to ask. “Do you want me to handle it?”

Arthur shakes his head. “No. Thank you, but—no. This is long overdue.”

Merlin reaches out and puts a hand on Arthur’s shoulder before he can think better of it. Arthur doesn’t shake him off (or break his arm), which is encouraging.

“All right then,” Merlin says. “Let’s go find her.”

“That won’t be necessary,” says a voice from behind. They both whirl; Arthur has his gun out already, and Merlin’s hand goes for his before he remembers Cedric took it.

The shadows are thick in the dimly lit hallway, but he can make out a tall man with a shock of white hair and beard. His hands are over his head.

“There’s no need to be hasty, Mr. Pendragon,” the old man says, gravelly and unimpressed. “I am not here to harm either of you.”

“Who are you?” Arthur demands.

“Call me K,” the man replies, and if that’s meant to be reassuring, Merlin rather thinks he’s missing the point. “I have some information that will be useful to you, if you’ll stop waving your gun around. It pertains to Agravaine duBois and his operation.”

Merlin squints in the dark. “Right, so, ignoring the fact that we have no idea who you are or where you’re getting this supposed intel, why would you want to help us?”

“The greater good, Mr. Emrys,” K says gravely. “Men like duBois are a danger to us all, and after the last war I no longer take such men lightly.” He closes his eyes briefly, as if in pain, but the expression is gone so quickly it might have been a trick of the light.

“In addition,” he continues, “I have an asset in duBois’ hands right now, and I would much rather she didn’t stay there.”

‘Asset’, not ‘agent’. And a woman at that. Merlin’s mouth falls open a little; Arthur looks no less dumbstruck.

“ _Gwen_?” they blurt at the same time.

K inclines his head. “I contacted her long before you did, Mr. Emrys, and we waited for your agency to make contact. Although Mr. Pendragon’s involvement briefly threatened to make things complicated.”

“She kept disappearing,” Arthur murmurs. “I wondered where she went, all those times in the hotel.”

Merlin twigs. “And the invitations to Agravaine’s party—”

“We can discuss our mutual histories at another time,” K interrupts. “Right now I would ask for your assistance in retrieving Miss Smithson.”

“How?” Arthur asks; his voice is tightly wound, but Merlin notices he’s lowered his gun. “They've left by boat, but this is Rome. That doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”

“No,” K agrees. “But I have something that might help, if you will follow me.”

Which is about the stupidest proposition Merlin’s ever heard, and judging by the tension he can feel radiating from the man by his side, Arthur’s no happier about it. But they’re facing a truly stunning lack of options right now, so when K turns, they follow.

There’s a door at the far end of the hall. When K opens it, Merlin is faced with sunlight and a spectacular racket. Sort of like—

“You must be joking,” Arthur says. Merlin almost doesn’t hear him over the noise, but he lets out a disbelieving laugh all the same.

“Gentleman,” K calls over the noise of the helicopter, “I hope neither of you are afraid of heights.”

.


	9. Chapter 9

.

**_Chapter Nine_ **

.

Arthur does not appreciate heights.

Unlike Merlin, who used to light up like a child meeting Father Christmas every time the agency decided a helicopter was necessary for one mission or another, Arthur has never understood what’s “fun” about being thousands of feet in the air in what essentially amounts to a fancy tin can.

But here they are in Arthur’s least favorite variety of tin can, with a man they’re not entirely sure they can trust but are apparently forced to trust anyway.

At least this explains why Guinevere kept vanishing on him—she was making contact with her own handler. The revelation of her moonlighting doesn’t make their current situation any less of a spectacular quagmire, but it does loosen the knot of betrayal in Arthur’s chest somewhat.

Family is family, after all. He can understand that if nothing else.

“Mr. Pendragon,” K says, that gravelly voice in the headphones startling Arthur out of his thoughts. “It seems you have a call.”

“A call?” Arthur repeats, and promptly feels like an idiot when K taps his own headphones meaningfully.

“I’m having it transferred to you,” the old man says before turning to Merlin. “In a rather startling display of efficiency I’ve one coming in for you as well, Mr. Emrys.”

Merlin turns away from the window with a look of surprise, but Arthur has no time to try and gauge from his expression who might be calling.

He can guess, anyway, considering it’s Uther who now speaks in his ear.

“You are en route to the warhead,” his father says. It’s not a question, but Arthur responds anyway.

“Yes. We seem to have acquired a new ally.”

“So I hear.” He sounds about as pleased with the development as Arthur would have predicted. “And I’ll expect a full explanation for all of this in your mission report once you return. But in the meantime I wish to clarify something about the nature of your current assignment.”

Something in the tone of Uther’s voice sets off warning bells in Arthur’s mind—the kind that usually engage when he’s a hair’s breadth from getting shot.

“I’m listening,” he says.

“Good,” Uther replies. “I imagine that when you locate Dr. Smithson’s warhead there will be records of the research that went into it. Copies. I want you to acquire one of these copies and bring it back to the agency for investigation; destroy the rest.”

Arthur starts, and it’s only at the last second—remembering Merlin and K in close proximity—that he remembers to keep his voice down. The cacophony of the helicopter gives him cover, but best not to take chances.

“For what purpose? Surely it would be better if a weapon like that didn’t exist in the first place?”

“I am not in the habit of explaining myself to my own son,” Uther says coldly. “But since it is a rare occurrence, I will say that fear is an effective deterrent against those that would harm us. Those that would threaten our way of life.”

“But to potentially use something like—”

“These are your orders, Arthur. Are they not sufficiently clear?”

The desire to scream rises up in his throat like bile, and for one mad, frustrated moment Arthur considers giving in to it—but no. He swallows the sensation down and takes a deep breath. He isn’t going to have this argument with his father over thousands of miles. He’s going to do it in person, face to face.

There’s quite a bit they have to talk about, he’s finding. There are a lot of things Uther has never seen fit to explain to his son.

“They’re clear,” Arthur says. The words taste sour.

“Very good. And there is one more thing.”

Of course. “What is it?”

“Emrys will no doubt be given a similar order by his own agency—collect the research, bring it back for study and such. We cannot afford to have this happen. An organization that welcomes traitors and defectors is not to be trusted with such a weapon.”

There are many, many things that Arthur wants to say to that, but he holds his tongue and promises himself it’s for the last time.

“What is it that you’re asking me to do?”

“I’m not asking you to do anything, Arthur. Your orders are to retrieve the _sole_ copy of Dr. Smithson’s research. That is all.”

Arthur’s fingers tighten in the seat covers. “And if he tries to do the same?”

Uther’s voice is calm. “Then I expect you to take care of things.”

.

“What?” is all Merlin says. It feels like all the blood has drained out of him, leaving behind a husk. One too many shocks in one day.

“I’m sorry.” Gaius sounds genuinely apologetic, but somehow that doesn’t make Merlin feel any better. “These orders come from people far more influential than me. For whatever it’s worth, I fought tooth and nail against it.”

“So that’s it then? I’m just supposed to—”

_Kill him. Take the most dangerous weapons technology on record to the States and oh, if Arthur tries to take that tech to his own people, just off him for us would you?_

“These are orders.” Gaius hesitates. “We don’t know that the situation will come to that.”

But Merlin does. Arthur’s getting the same orders or he’ll eat his shoes; Uther would never pass up an opportunity like this—getting a hold of the warhead and possibly getting rid of a loose end in the bargain. And for all his faults, Arthur is still Uther’s son. Still so loyal that it almost hurts to watch.

Those nebulous ‘influential people’ don’t know Arthur like Merlin does, or they do and they just don’t care. There’s no pleasant way for this to end.

His silence goes on long enough that Gaius must take it for assent, or at least sufficient resignation.

“I’m sorry, Merlin,” he says gently, and the communication goes dead.

Merlin pulls his headphones off, feeling numb. K will probably have plenty to say when they get closer to Agravaine’s location, but Merlin doesn’t think he can handle having any other voices in his ear right now.

As it often is, his gaze is pulled to Arthur like a magnet. Arthur is sitting ramrod-straight, staring ahead at nothing; it’s a fair facsimile of the preternatural calm he gets when gearing up for a particularly dangerous mission, but Merlin notices his hands and his mouth are tense. Looks like they’ve both had some bad news.

“Mr. Emrys!”

Merlin jolts to attention. K is gesturing to his headphones; reluctantly, Merlin puts them back on.

“Gentlemen,” K says, “we are approaching Agravaine duBois’ hideout. I intend to land a mile or so away to avoid alerting his security, but we still need to be cautious about our approach. Commit the following schematics to memory, if you please…”

.

As it turns out, sabotaging a near-completed nuclear warhead is difficult when the man who commissioned said warhead is breathing down your neck. Quite literally, in Gwen’s case.

She’s been in this room for hours, watching her father work. With them are Agravaine and no less than four armed guards. The room is silent.

The only upside to the spectacularly tense atmosphere is that it’s given Gwen plenty of time to observe her father’s creation. She might not know much about nuclear physics, but her mechanical knowledge is still enough to support what she’d already guessed: her father has been purposely delaying its completion for a long time.

Some had called him a traitor, she thinks with a tinge of bitterness. They ought to see him now.

Sweat is beading around her father’s temples. He shoots her a grim look when Agravaine’s back is turned and Gwen understands that they’ve run out of time.

Her heart pounding in her ears, Gwen deliberately knocks over a bowl of bolts. The crash it makes when it hits the concrete floor is enough to make them all jump, and as Agravaine turns to give her an irritable look Gwen sees, over his shoulder, her father quickly pocket the last piece of the warhead.

“You’ll forgive me if I ask you to step back, Miss Smithson,” Agravaine says. Gwen nods meekly and tries not to wring her hands out of nerves.

“Well,” her father says after a few more minutes of tinkering. “That should be that.”

Agravaine gets closer to the worktable. “It’s finished?”

“Yes.”

He glances over at Gwen. “You must be quite the motivational speaker. Well done.”

She says nothing, biting her tongue, while Agravaine returns his attention to her father. “Tell me, Doctor, which of these many switches will arm the nuclear portion of the missile?”

“This one.” Her father sounds like he’s biting the words out. Gwen stays still and focuses; this is information that she suspects they’ll need later.

“I see,” Agravaine is saying. “And how would I go about honing this one to the second warhead?”

Gwen’s head comes up sharply. _Second?_

“Flip this switch here, wait for the light to turn green, then press this,” her father says. “Are we finished here, duBois?”

Agravaine lapses into a considering silence. He looks thoughtfully at the missile.

“I regret to say that I’m unsure,” he says, and reaches for his belt.

Rather abruptly, Gwen finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

“What are you doing?” her father demands, horrified.

“It’s quite simple,” Agravaine replies. “I don’t trust you, Dr. Smithson. In truth I don’t particularly trust either of you. Now, I may not be a brilliant engineer, but I do know a few things about people. I suspect you’ve done something to tamper with my warhead, and I want it fixed in the next three minutes.” His voice hardens. “Or Guinevere will have a hole through that pretty head of hers.”

Her father meets her eyes, helpless. Gwen shakes her head mutely, trying not to let on that she’s terrified, but her father reaches into his pocket anyway. A single piece—that was all he had taken, but Gwen doesn’t doubt it would have been enough to make the whole thing blow up in Agravaine’s face. Her father looks at it as if time has started going in slow motion.

Gwen forces her tongue to work. “Father, don't listen to him. You can’t—”

Agravaine cocks the pistol. “Quiet, please.”

Once again her father works in grim silence. Gwen isn’t certain how long it can possibly take to attach one piece of machinery, but some minutes later there’s a knock on the door.

Agravaine frowns, but his face clears when a feminine voice comes through the door.

“Just me, darling.”

He nods to one of the guards, who opens the door to reveal a gorgeous green-eyed woman in immaculate dress. Gwen remembers seeing her at the party—the fiancée, the one Merlin and Arthur apparently hadn’t known existed. K himself had been silent on the subject, and that worries her. What else might his intelligence have missed?

Morgan Faye gives Agravaine a perfunctory-seeming kiss on the cheek, her eyes never leaving the weapon on the table.

“Having trouble?” she asks in a light voice, apparently unconcerned by the fact that her fiancé is holding a gun to someone’s head.

“What are you still doing here?” Agravaine murmurs instead of answering her question. “You were meant to be on the boat an hour ago.”

“The car is waiting outside to take me there now,” she replies, moving to examine the warhead with hungry eyes.

“Then what brings you here?”

She looks up. Gwen wonders if she’s imagining the impatience in the dark-haired woman’s expression.

“Thoroughness,” she says. “I was hoping the good doctor could tell me whether the weapon is secure before I go gallivanting across the countryside in it.”

 _The weapon_ , Gwen realizes. _The second warhead. She has it!_

Agravaine frowns. “Now? This is—rather a delicate time.”

“For me as well,” Morgan points out. “Or have you forgotten my neck is on the line as much as yours?”

She smiles with disconcerting sweetness as Agravaine blinks.

“I’ll only need him a moment,” she says, taking Gwen’s father by the arm. The guards look to their employer, who nods in a resigned sort of way.

“She’ll not stop until she gets what she wants,” is all he says. Morgan throws him one last winning smile before going out the way she came.

The moments after she departs are impressively awkward.

“She seems nice,” Gwen offers, and immediately wonders if she’s lost her mind.

Agravaine says nothing, which Gwen supposes is understandable—she’s guessing her attempts at small talk are breaching all kinds of hostage etiquette. Still.

“Is that why you trust her enough to take a nuclear warhead across the city?” she continues.

That gets a reaction. Agravaine’s grip tightens on her arm.

“That will do, Miss Smithson,” he says, and something in the tone of his voice tells her not to press.

Gwen’s father makes his return a scant five minutes later, having inspected Morgan’s transportation and been escorted back to the workshop by another sour-faced guard. The door closes behind him with an air of finality, and Gwen’s heart sinks: they’ve run out of time. Even Morgan’s unexpected visit hadn’t bought them enough time for her friends to catch up.

Her father tries his best, she knows, but there’s only so much he can do to stall a relatively simple process. It takes him a few more minutes to attach the last piece. During that time Agravaine presses a button on the wall; Gwen watches, fascinated despite her nerves, as the back wall of the airless little room begins to lift up, revealing the road and the landscape beyond. They've been in another garage this whole time, she thinks.

“There,” her father says at last, and Gwen’s head lifts up sharply. “It’s done.”

“Are you certain?” Agravaine asks. Gwen feels gunmetal pressing sharply into her skin. “Think carefully, please.”

“I’m certain,” her father says, stone-faced. “You’ll have no trouble. I swear.”

Agravaine smiles a genial sort of smile.

“Then I think we’re finished here,” he says.

He raises his pistol and shoots Gwen’s father twice in the chest.

.

The gunshots sound just as they reach the door, followed by a scream that makes gooseflesh break out on the back of Merlin’s neck.

“Gwen,” he blurts, and Arthur’s eyes harden. He puts away his lock picks and steps away from the door.

“Stand back,” he says. Merlin has 0.5 seconds to comply before Arthur kicks the door down in spectacular fashion and they both storm into the room.

Agravaine has one hand digging bruises into Gwen’s arm, and the other is holding a gun to her temple. A few feet away on the floor lies a body that can only be Dr. Smithson’s.

Merlin almost can’t comprehend how they’ve managed to fuck this up so badly.

“That will do, gentlemen, thank you,” Agravaine says. “I’m sure I don’t need to ask you to put your weapons down.”

“Don’t!” Tears are streaming down Gwen’s face, but her tone is fierce. “Don’t, he’ll kill you too, just—”

The muzzle of the gun presses warningly into her skin, and Merlin almost makes a move forward.

“And that will be quite enough out of you, Miss Smithson, thank you,” Agravaine mutters. Behind him, two guards are lifting the warhead with infinite care and preparing to load it onto an apparatus on the back of what is presumably Agravaine’s getaway car of choice. Agravaine begins to back away.

“There, you see? There was never any need for this to become violent,” he says. Arthur’s eyes flicker to the body of Gwen’s father on the floor; Merlin can see a muscle jumping furiously in his jaw.

 _Two guards_ , he thinks, forcing himself to be logical. _Two guards between us and them and Agravaine’s finger on the trigger. There’s no way this ends well, not here_.

Agravaine has maneuvered Gwen into the passenger seat, her hands bound as he gets behind the wheel.

“Take care of them,” he says over his shoulder, just before there’s a screech of tires and both Gwen and the warhead are out of sight.

Both of the guards pull a gun from their holsters. Merlin sighs.

“Well, I’d say it was nice knowing you,” he says. “But…you know.”

Arthur glances sideways at him, the beginnings of a smirk on his mouth. “Shut up, Merlin. Remember Barcelona?”

Merlin remembers quite a bit about Barcelona, actually, but in this case he thinks he can guess which part Arthur’s referring to. He grins.

“How could I forget?”

“That’s enough from both of you,” one of the guards snaps, taking aim.

“If you insist,” Merlin replies, and he and Arthur both drop.

Shooting for kneecaps instead of body mass isn’t easy under the best of circumstances, but the guards are startled enough by their target’s sudden change in position that it’s not as hard as it could have been. Merlin almost feels bad for them, groaning on the floor as their firearms are carefully kicked out of reach, but then he remembers _right, yes, nuclear warhead_ and the guilt begins to subside. He's just grateful K was able to replace his firearm.

Arthur is already halfway into the passenger seat of another one of Agravaine’s cars.

“You drive,” he says. “I’ll shoot.”

Merlin gets behind the wheel; thankfully Agravaine is the sort of overly confident person who leaves the keys in the ignition. “Just try to avoid shooting the radioactive missile and killing us all, would you?”

“Can’t make any promises,” Arthur retorts, to which Merlin responds by gunning it out of Agravaine’s garage.

.


	10. Chapter 10

.

**_Chapter Ten_ **

.

Thanks to the man’s apparent obsession with things that go very, very fast, they actually catch up with Agravaine fairly quickly. The problem then becomes how the hell they’re going to stop him on these winding roads before he reaches his destination.

Merlin thinks the whole thing is beginning to feel rather stupid; at this rate they’re going to run out of gas before anything else has a chance to happen.

“Shoot the tires out!” he suggests over the roar of the engine. “Also, _duck_.”

Arthur withdraws his head just in time to avoid decapitation by low-hanging tree branch, frustration in his voice. “I can’t just _shoot the tires out_ , Merlin, if Agravaine loses control of the car he might send it over a cliff.”

“Then what’s the grand plan here, just keep invading his personal space until he makes it to god-knows-where?”

“Oh, for—” Arthur leans out of the window again, and the next thing Merlin hears is the _bang_ of a gunshot and a brief screeching of tires.

“What was that?” he demands when Arthur reappears in the passenger seat.

“One tire,” Arthur replies. “It’s not enough for him to lose control, but it might slow him down enough that—wait.”

Merlin doesn’t like that tone. “For what?”

“What the _hell_ is she doing?”

“Arthur, what—”

He takes his eyes off the road just long enough to see Gwen lunge across the front seat, grabbing the wheel with her still-bound hands and sending the car veering off the road.

“ _Gwen_!”

The name rips itself out of his throat, because no matter that she’s been lying to them, she’s still turned into something of a friend.

And now she’s disappeared over the hillside, along with Agravaine.

“Merlin, _brakes_ —”

He clocks in just in time to slam on the brakes before he and Arthur take their own tumble over a rapidly approaching cliff, breathing hard. Arthur’s face is drawn.

“We have to go down there,” he says, and Merlin nods.

They walk back to the place where Agravaine’s car had gone over, tire marks still fresh on the cement, and begin to pick their way down the hillside. The car left a wide swath of broken branches and crushed plants in its wake, but the slope isn’t too steep. Maybe…

Merlin’s heartbeat is firmly situated in his ears, thumping out a rhythm of _maybe, maybe, maybe_.

The landscape flattens out as they reach the bottom, opening up into a wide green space overshadowed by gray sky. A fat raindrop spatters on Merlin’s nose. _Brilliant, just a perfect addition to the day_.

Agravaine’s car is battered—all the windows shattered and the body dented and crushed beyond repair—but remarkably upright in the middle of the field. It must have rolled over, Merlin realizes, his stomach twisting at the mental picture. He almost doesn’t want to get any closer.

But he knows he doesn’t have a choice, and that’s even before Arthur puts a bracing hand on his shoulder and trudges grimly on.

The rain is starting to come down in earnest by the time they make it to the pitiful remains of the car; Merlin automatically makes a beeline for Gwen, his eyes sweeping over the driver’s seat as he passes.

Agravaine appears to have vanished, any bloody trails already washed away by the torrential rain. Some exhausted part of Merlin thinks that if he crawled off to die somewhere, it’d be good riddance to bad rubbish.

Gwen isn’t moving.

“The structure keeping the warhead on the car seems to have detached,” Arthur is saying, toneless in that way he gets when everything goes wrong. “It must have been thrown off to the side of the hill someplace. I’m going to find it—and duBois, if I can.” He pauses, a short and unbearably heavy beat of silence. “Is Guinevere…”

“I don’t know,” Merlin says. He doesn’t say anything else, and after a moment he hears Arthur’s footsteps squashing away.

He takes a deep breath. _Check for vitals first_. He starts to reach for Gwen and then hesitates, wondering if he’ll make it worst by touching her. There’s blood trickling from her temple and the beginnings of some spectacular bruises on her face.

“Gwen?” he tries, quiet.

Her eyelids flutter. Merlin feels hope like a needle jab.

“Gwen? Can you open your eyes?”

She does, slowly, her eyes unfocused. “Merlin?” Her gaze sharpens suddenly. “Behind—”

Merlin’s already turning with his gun halfway out of its holster, so the rock Agravaine’s wielding hits the side of his head rather than the back. Merlin doesn’t drop like a stone, but it’s a near thing—his vision has gone very blurry all of a sudden, and all he hears in one ear is a buzzing reminiscent of angry bees.

His gun seems to have vacated his hand, which is a problem. Merlin finds that he’s well past the _fuck it_ stage at this point, so he forgoes the usual hand-to-hand combat etiquette and just throws himself at Agravaine, knocking them both into the mud.

Merlin knows, logically, that he’s never been the best at physical fighting. Less so when he’s worn down from torture and getting bashed in the head by a rock, which he thinks is pretty understandable, especially as the upshot of the rock-bashing is that Agravaine’s bloodstained face is swimming in and out of Merlin’s vision. It’s surprisingly difficult to hit a moving target.

So despite the fact that he gets a few good punches in, it’s not altogether surprising when Merlin finds himself on his back with Agravaine’s fingers digging into his throat.

It’s just been that kind of day.

Merlin’s trying, all right, but Agravaine is an English-born bastard who owns nothing but layers and he can't quite seem to reach the man’s eyes in an attempt to claw them out. All he manages to do is rip the seam on one of Agravaine’s coat pockets, spilling two small objects out onto the grass. Dark spots are beginning to blink in and out of his line of sight, and there’s an ache in his chest like his lungs are really starting to resent the lack of oxygen being sent their way.

 _What a pathetic way to go_ , he thinks, just as a shout drags his attention away from his own impending demise.

Agravaine looks up as well—and then the shot rings out, and he’s falling backward, and suddenly Merlin can breathe again.

It takes longer than it should to twist himself around and look up; he’s expecting to see Arthur, barging in at the last minute like Bond himself, but as Merlin’s sight begins to clear he sees that the hands holding the gun—his own gun—are trembling.

Gwen lowers the still-smoking weapon and sinks back in her seat. Her shoulders begin to shake.

“You saved my life,” Merlin says hoarsely. The rain seems to have stopped when he wasn’t paying attention.

There’s no answer from Gwen, but then Arthur comes running out of the tree line and Merlin’s window of opportunity to thank her is lost.

He doesn’t ask either of them what happened; Gwen’s shaking form, Agravaine’s dead body and Merlin’s depressingly useless position on the ground, he thinks, are pretty self-explanatory. Merlin’s grateful to see that Arthur stops to speak to Gwen first, carefully touching her shoulder and talking in a low, calming voice.

Merlin closes his eyes, just for a second, remembering how grounding that voice had been the first time one of their missions had gone utterly sideways—Arthur could have been in radio if the whole spy thing hadn’t worked out, Merlin thinks tiredly, and that’s when a hand on his arm prompts him to open his eyes.

“Arthur?”

Arthur’s face clears. Behind him, Gwen is saying, “Is he all right?”

“Unfortunately he’s still coherent, yes,” Arthur replies, and Merlin would roll his eyes if he didn’t think doing so would lead to an immediate revisiting of his breakfast.

“Arse,” he mutters. “Did you find…?”

“The warhead appears to be intact,” Arthur replies.

Merlin lets out a breath of relief. “Good. Seems like a job well done, then.”

“But what about the other one?” Gwen demands. Arthur frowns.

“What other one?”

“Agravaine said—” Her eyes flicker to the body on the ground and Gwen swallows hard. “He said that there’s a second warhead. That they can lock onto each other somehow.”

“For double the impact, I imagine,” Arthur says darkly. Merlin groans.

“The safe,” he says. “Remember? All that radiation—Agravaine must’ve been keeping the second one there before he moved it.”

“I didn’t see the second,” Gwen says, her face creasing in thought. “But a woman showed up just before—just before you did, and said that she had it.” Her eyes light up. “She was going to take it on a boat, I remember that.”

“She’ll be halfway across the ocean by now,” Merlin says, running his fingers back through his hair. “Maybe if we got hold of K—”

“You know about K?” Gwen interrupts.

“Yes, we’ve become acquainted as of late,” a familiar gravelly voice says, and all three of their heads spin as if on a swivel. K is standing a few feet away in the grass, his immaculate suit somehow untouched by the mud the rest of them are covered in.

Arthur doesn’t waste time with pleasantries. “Can you get us to Morgana?” he asks, short and sharp.

K inclines his head. “What is it that you think I’ve been doing, Mr. Pendragon? Our boat merely awaits your sterling presence.”

As the old man moves to help Gwen out of the car, the two of them murmuring about bruised ribs and twisted ankles and such, Merlin sits up fast—which is a massive mistake and his roiling stomach is all too happy to tell him so. Emphatically. Oh, but a boat ride across storm-chopped waters is going to be _fun_.

While he’s trying not to throw up all over the place his eyes land on the objects that had fallen from Agravaine’s pocket during their fight. Looking more closely, Merlin realizes that they’re two rolls of tape, both sealed in little plastic containers.

 _Copies_ , he thinks, his mouth going dry. _He made copies_.

Really, he doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Agravaine would have sold the warhead— _warheads_ , apparently—to whoever had offered the most money, and then maybe in a month or so, after his buyers had used the weapon to decimate an enemy city, Agravaine would have proceeded to sell Dr. Smithson’s formula to the injured party so that they could take their revenge. And then sold the second copy off to another party just for shits and giggles.

_He was trying to manufacture his own war._

Merlin’s nausea returns with a vengeance, but this time he doesn’t think it’s the concussion. How many times has Agravaine done something like this? How many people have died because of it?

“Merlin?”

He drags his eyes away from the tapes. Arthur is looking at him with concern.

“We need to go,” he says. “If Morgana gets back to land, she’ll disappear.”

Merlin nods, but his mind is whirring away. Gaius’ voice comes suddenly into his head— _the mission, the greater good_ …

Arthur has turned away to check on Gwen, who’s standing braced against K’s shoulder. Merlin reaches down and takes one of the tapes before he can think too hard about it. It feels like a lead weight.

But not nearly as much as the fact that the second tape is already gone.

.

K owns a boat, which at this point Arthur does not find at all surprising. Even less so is the tracking and sonar equipment that could, if Arthur is being honest with himself, give the tech department of his own organization a run for its money. The captain is a stone-faced, silent man who helms the ship and offers no opinion on the proceedings whatsoever. K walks around the deck briskly, occasionally giving orders and examining little screens that, Arthur is told, have the ability to detect radiation residue at short distances.

All of this means that Arthur has very little to do other than think, and he’d really rather be doing anything else right now.

Up to this point, everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong. Some of the things that have gone wrong were things Arthur hadn’t even considered, which is saying something, because Arthur’s imagination when it comes to worst-case scenarios is broad and varied. Imagining a problem, after all, is the first step to fixing it.

And yet here they are. One warhead is secured on the back of a not-altogether-trustworthy man’s boat, while the other is sailing away with his eternally opaque sister. Gwen is hurt, Merlin is hurt—though neither of them seriously, which at least presents the vague possibility that Arthur might sleep tonight—and they’ve been sailing for at least an hour with no sign of—

“There,” K says suddenly. “Bear right, if you please.”

 _Starboard_ , some clinical part of Arthur’s mind corrects automatically, which at least provides a minute distraction from the fact that his heart has clambered up into his throat.

“There’ll be a radio onboard,” Gwen says from where she’s sitting. “They’re required by law. Safety reasons.”

K nods to the captain, who fusses with their own radio for a moment before speaking into the microphone.

“Miss Faye, this is the _Drakon_. We request that you abandon your current course and make for the nearest docking station.”

“That’s it?” Arthur hears Merlin hissing, before Gwen shushes him. The silence from the boat’s radio feels like a physical person standing onboard. The captain tries again.

“Miss Faye, I repeat, we request that you abandon your current course and make for the nearest docking station.”

No answer. Nothing to indicate that Morgana’s listening or even that she’s there at all. Arthur finds that his store of patience has just run out.

“Give me the mouthpiece,” he says. The captain gives him a long look before turning to K, who nods. Wordlessly, the captain passes it over.

Arthur puts the phone to his ear and takes a deep breath. “Morgana?”

He can hear Gwen asking something of Merlin in a whisper, probably confused at the change of name, but Arthur ignores it. His focus is entirely on the conversation he has to have right now.

“Morgana, it’s—it’s Arthur. I know you’re there. You have to pick up.”

Nothing. The captain is shaking his head, having some sort of silent, frustrated argument with K—silent, but Arthur gets the gist nonetheless. They’re running out of time.

“Your fiancé is dead.” He hates himself, but he forces the words out anyway. “Agravaine is dead. I’m sorry.”

Another long stretch of silence. Arthur is beginning to wonder if they’ve got the wrong boat after all when there’s a tiny _click_ in his ear.

“Hello, Arthur.”

He lets out a breath.

“Hello, Morgana.”

The people around him begin to rustle with activity at the confirmation; Arthur isn’t sure what they’re doing and for the moment he doesn’t care.

“My condolences,” he says.

“Who killed him?” Morgana asks conversationally. This is not the way he was expecting this to go, but Arthur rallies.

“Does it matter, at this point?”

She gives a mirthless little laugh. “No. I suppose not. Still, I have the second warhead, so I guess that means I still come out on top, doesn’t it?”

Arthur’s fingers dig into the phone. “Morgana, listen to me. You don’t have to do—whatever it is you’re thinking about doing. You can put a stop to this.” Arthur swallows hard. “You can come home.”

“Home?”

He would’ve expected derision. Instead Morgana almost sounds sorry for him.

“Oh, Arthur. Is ‘home’ what you’d call it? We’re all weapons to him, you know. Just like this warhead.”

“And how much better are you?” Arthur demands, suddenly furious—how dare she pity him now? “Do you even realize that your fiancé killed Gwen’s father?”

“Agravaine found it necessary,” Morgana replies, sounding unsurprised. “He couldn’t have Dr. Smithson’s research spreading. You know what sort of chaos that could cause. That’s why no copies of his work were made.”

“You’re wrong about that.” Arthur waits a moment for that to sink in.

“Agravaine made—” Morgana laughs again, short and bitter. “Of course he did. The bastard never did know to listen when smarter people were talking. So he had copies made, did he? And I wonder who has them now, hm?”

Arthur can all but feel the tape burning a hole in his pocket. And there’s the derision from Morgana, right on cue.

“Daddy’s perfect little soldier.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about me,” he snaps. “Not anymore, no more than—”

 _Than I know you_ , are the words that don’t quite leave his mouth. The captain nudges Arthur out of the way to insert a key into the counter in front of him and turn it. A red light goes on, a button waiting to be pushed, but none of it registers because suddenly Arthur can’t think.

_None of this makes sense._

“Why are you doing this?” he asks. “Why do any of this? You can’t have changed this much, what was the _point_?”

For a long minute he thinks she’s not going to answer at all.

“Arthur,” Morgana begins. She sounds almost sad.

“Fire,” says K’s grave voice.

Arthur whirls on him. “What the hell are you _doing_?” he demands, but then he remembers Gwen saying something about the missiles being able to hone in on one another. They must have fired the second one, which means—

His stomach turns over.

“Morgana? Morgana, listen to me, you need to get off that boat.” She doesn’t answer. Merlin is in his peripheral vision, grabbing K’s shoulder, yelling something, but Arthur isn’t listening. “Can you hear me? Get off _now_. They’re going to—”

The radio goes dead, static buzzing in his ear just as a spectacular cloud of fire and smoke appears over a distant spot on the sea.

The phone slips from Arthur’s suddenly numb fingers.

It seems like an eternity that he stands there, frozen, unable to tear his eyes away from the blast and his mind wiped utterly blank. Finally Arthur feels a hand on his shoulder.

He turns, mechanical and slow, to see Merlin. Behind him Gwen has her hand over her mouth, tears trickling down her face. K has disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Arthur hears himself reply as if from very far away.

“So am I.”

He finds he has no more words than that.

_._

He phones his handler the minute they’re back in their hotel room, Gwen having tactfully chosen this time to make a report to her handler. Arthur appreciates the thought, but oddly, he doesn’t think he’d have minded all that much if she’d stayed—Gwen has lost her father, after all, and Arthur can’t claim a monopoly on today’s grief.

There is a long, long silence after he explains what happened to Uther. Arthur wonders dully if the connection dropped sometime during his long-winded and admittedly shaky recollection.

“I see,” his father says at last, and the line goes dead in Arthur’s ear.

.


	11. Chapter 11

.

**_Chapter Eleven_ **

.

“You did well, Guinevere.”

K offers her a cup of tea. Gwen takes the mug with a nod of thanks, sincerely hoping that there’s something a bit stronger than tea mixed in.

“I didn’t know what I was doing most of the time,” she admits. “Not really.” She fixes K with a stern stare. “There’s a lot you didn’t tell me. I trusted you because you helped my brother to disappear, but I think I deserve an explanation now.”

K nods at her mug. “That really is best when drunk warm.”

Gwen forces herself to keep her frustration down and her voice even. “I want the truth now, please. You said you had someone else inside.”

The old man meets her eyes. His are utterly unreadable. “So I did.”

“Then where were they?” Gwen demands. “Everything very nearly went to pieces! My father—”

“We have already discussed Dr. Smithson,” K interrupts, polite but firm. “I trust I have your satisfaction in that regard.”

“Yes, but—”

“As to the identity of my agent, that is information I would only reveal if given compelling proof of your commitment.”

“You mean you’re still testing me?” she says in disbelief. “After all this?”

K leans forward, his chin on his interlaced fingers and his expression serious. Gwen sets her mug down, trying to ignore the way her hands are shaking.

“I killed someone today,” she says. “He was a terrible person, and he was trying to kill one of my friends and thousands of other people besides, but I’m still fairly certain I’m going to have nightmares about killing him for the rest of my life.” She folds her hands in her lap. “Is that compelling enough for you?”

“Your commitment to this mission was never in question,” K says gently. “It is your future commitment that I inquire after. This is not a forgiving path, Miss Smithson, and neither is it easily left, should you choose to walk it.”

She meets his eyes and doesn’t hesitate. “I want to help. I told you that before, and my answer hasn’t changed just because things are no longer personal. The world is spinning out of control, K. Someone needs to help the people who are in danger of being thrown off.”

“Well said,” comes a voice from the shadows. A figure steps forward to stand behind K’s chair, and Gwen is suddenly very glad she already set the mug down.

“ _You_?”

“I would say to introduce yourselves, but…” K smiles wryly. “I believe you two are already acquainted.”

.

Merlin doesn’t sleep for shit that night.

Their return to the hotel had been mostly silent, Merlin acutely aware that within their little triad he was the only one who hadn’t lost an immediate family member in the last twenty-four hours. Arthur and Gwen were both clearly hurting and Merlin…well, he’d to help, all right?

But all he could offer were words, and there were no words to fix what had happened. So he’d kept his mouth shut.

Now he’s lying on top of his covers with the lights out, too knackered to even bother with pulling the coverlet back, and staring at the shadowed ceiling. They’re each meant to catch early flights tomorrow, get back to their respective countries and submit to their respective debriefings. He isn’t sure what will happen to Gwen, considering her ties to what appears to be yet another agency and the fact that K didn’t opt to share that information with anybody until the eleventh hour.

Merlin isn’t sure what will happen to him, either, considering he’s technically failed in his mission. Dr. Smithson isn’t coming home, and Merlin is beginning to think that neither is his research. And while he doesn’t regret the latter nearly as much as he does the former, Merlin doubts his superiors will see things the same way.

He’s not certain whether he cares anymore. Haven’t they done the same as Uther? Ordered him to betray someone he loves? What is he supposed to do with that?

Of course, this is all assuming that he survives long enough to make the flight back to America in the first place. There’s still one mission parameter they haven’t resolved, isn’t there?

As the sun comes up over Rome Merlin finally gives up on trying to sleep, gets dressed, and starts packing. He’s nearly finished when there’s a knock at his door.

When he opens it, Arthur is standing in the doorway. Merlin ignores the sudden churning in his stomach and tries to act surprised.

“Arthur!” He plasters a smile on his face. “What are you doing here? Any more bugs you’d like to collect before you leave?”

There’s an uncomfortably long pause before Arthur answers.

“Not bugs, no. But I did forget something,” he says at last. Merlin can feel his own smile slipping. He turns away.

“Well, can I at least offer you one last drink before you get on your plane? You’ve probably got another mission lined up already—off to Berlin next, aren’t you?”

“That won’t work,” Arthur says with a hint of dryness. “You know it won’t.”

Merlin aims a grin at him over his shoulder as he heads into the bedroom. “Maybe, but you can’t blame me for trying.” He’s never been able to trick Arthur into telling him anything about his future assignments, not even when they’d been…well. Not even then. It had become a well-worn joke at some point, almost a ritual. Comfortable. Easy.

Merlin honestly can’t remember the last time anything was that easy.

He turns away again, pretends to rearrange the pile of neatly folded clothing he’s got stacked up in his suitcase. Just waiting to be zipped, tied up with a neat little bow like all of his other assignments. Case closed. Just the conclusion to one more chapter in the life of a supposedly secret agent, this one no more notable than any other.

Except that there’s one last thing he still needs to do.

There’s a small hand mirror propped up on the bedside table. Merlin doesn’t think Arthur can see it, which is probably the only reason Arthur is allowing himself to stand so still. It’s intent. Merlin’s seen that stance a thousand times before, only it was always focused on marks, not—

Oh. He supposes he is a mark, now. He has been for a long time.

“So everything’s been wrapped up?” he asks without turning around, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible. “No more loose ends?”

“More or less,” Arthur replies. He sounds almost normal; Merlin would applaud if he didn’t think it would ruin the ambiance. “The records of Dr. Smithson’s research have all been destroyed. It would seem that our work here is just about finished.”

“Oh?” Merlin says, mouth dry. He can hear his heart beginning to pound in his ears, in a way it hasn’t since he was still green at this. “Then why drop in?”

In the reflection, Arthur’s hand is beginning to move toward his jacket pocket. Merlin slides a hand underneath one of the clothing piles, feeling around carefully. “You said you’d forgotten something, didn’t you?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Merlin’s fingers brush cold metal. He swallows hard.

“Funny thing, that,” he manages. “I forgot—I had something to give you as well.”

“Funny,” Arthur repeats. His voice is grim.

Merlin closes his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says. In his mind’s eye he fancies he can see Arthur’s reflection pulling his gun out from his waistband, drawing it level with Merlin’s head. His aim has always been perfect; no one knows that better than Merlin does. He won’t miss. Not at this range.

Slowly, Merlin opens his eyes and turns around.

“Catch,” he says, and tosses the object in his hand across the room.

Arthur catches it on instinct, one hand outstretched, the other still half hidden by his jacket. He looks down at the metal thing in his palm, a moment of confusion suddenly, beautifully obscured by understanding.

“This is—” Arthur clears his throat. He doesn’t look at Merlin. “This is my mother’s ring.”

“I know.” Merlin shrugs awkwardly. “I saw it on Cedric’s worktable. I thought—I knew you would want it back. It belongs with you.”

Arthur does look at him then, and Merlin isn’t quite sure what to call the expression on his face.

“Thank you,” he says, uncertain. Merlin forces himself to smile again.

“You’re welcome.”

There, he thinks, he’s done what he can. At least if Arthur decides to shoot him now Merlin can die with fewer regrets.

He’d rather not be dying in the first place, of course, but that’s always been one of the risks in their line of work. It’s not like he hasn’t been expecting this moment to come at some point or another.

“I brought something for you as well,” Arthur is saying.

Honestly, Merlin thinks some part of him knew it would be Arthur killing him from the moment he left.

And Merlin, for his part, is through running away.

“Catch,” Arthur echoes, and then he’s tossing something in Merlin’s general direction. Merlin catches it without thinking and looks down.

In his hand is a roll of film, neatly contained in round plastic.

“It’s the last copy of the work Gwen’s father did for Agravaine,” Arthur explains, seeing Merlin’s perplexed expression. “I lied when I said they had all been destroyed—but then, you knew that already.” Merlin coughs. Arthur continues. “My handler gave me orders to collect the information if possible, bring it back to the organization for study. And for replication, most likely.”

“Figured that much.” Merlin’s brow furrows as he looks up. “But then why give it to me?”

Arthur is looking down again, sliding his mother’s ring back onto his finger where it belongs.

“I haven’t trusted you for a long time,” he says quietly. “But lately I’ve been wondering if maybe I didn’t entirely earn that trust.” He looks up, meeting Merlin’s disbelieving look with a steady one of his own. “Consider this an apology for not understanding when it was important.”

Merlin tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. It takes a few tries, and by then he’s forgotten to ask what Arthur’s apologizing for.

“They ordered me to kill you,” he manages instead. Arthur nods.

“I assumed as much.”

“And they told you to kill me, too,” Merlin says doggedly. Arthur nods again.

“They did.”

Merlin looks again at the tape in his palm. Then, slowly, he reaches into his pocket and withdraws his own copy. Arthur’s expression doesn’t change.

“Do you have a light?” Merlin hears himself ask. Arthur wordlessly hands one over.

There’s an ashtray on the nightstand. The smell from the burning tapes is foul, but Merlin looks on in satisfaction nonetheless.

“I don’t think either of our organizations could be trusted with something like this,” he says quietly.

Beside him, Arthur’s mouth twists. “An accurate assessment, I think.”

Merlin watches him carefully. “They’ll hunt us down, you know. Both of us. Any way you slice it, one of us wasn’t supposed to walk out of this room.”

“Yes, well.” Arthur’s eyes are hard. “If they want to inspire loyalty in their agents, they would do well to create an organization that’s worth remaining loyal to.”

In a million years, he never thought he would hear those words coming out of Arthur’s mouth. Somehow it doesn’t really feel like a victory; to be honest, Merlin just feels exhausted. The implications of what they’re about to do are a nightmare—going on the run again, this time from two unspeakably powerful agencies instead of just the one (and _that_ hadn’t exactly been a picnic either). It’s not a prospect he relishes.

But there’s only one question at the forefront of his mind, so Merlin screws up his courage and asks it.

“And I s’pose you’ll be wanting to go solo again? You work better when you’re on your own, and all that?”

Arthur cringes. “Merlin, I think we need to—”

“Hello? Merlin, have you seen—oh.” Gwen appears, her curls back on full display. “There you are, Arthur. Are you finished packing? Could I borrow both of you for a minute? It’s sort of important—” She stops herself, looking between them like she’s picked up on the odd tension in the room. It’s not quite their usual ‘trying not to kill one another’ tension, so Merlin does sympathize.

“Am I interrupting something?” she asks.

Arthur shakes his head. “Not at all. What did you need?”

Gwen doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t press either. “There’s something I wanted to show you. It shouldn't take long—I don’t want either of you to miss your flights home.”

Home. Right. Merlin follows the two of them out of the room with a steadily sinking feeling—where the hell is home now? The U.S. and England on the whole are both probably out; he’s got a passing familiarity with most countries at this point, but none of them have ever felt like more than a rest stop. Even Vienna, which is generally very nice, has never seemed like a home.

He wonders what Arthur is going to do, where he’s going to go. If he’s having the same thoughts that Merlin is.

In the middle of his wondering about that, it occurs to Merlin that Gwen is leading them both up to the roof. He briefly switches to wondering if he should be concerned about this, but given the events of the last few days, Merlin decides his supply of fucks to give has well and truly run out. If Gwen decides to switch sides again and throw him off the roof, well, it will make Merlin’s decision about what to do next that much simpler.

She pushes open the roof access door. Merlin follows Arthur out into the sun.

.

Looking out at the view, his back turned to them, is K. Arthur immediately stiffens.

“What is he doing here?”

K turns around. He’s wearing a suit, even in this miserable heat, but he doesn’t seem to be showing any sign of discomfort.

“I would like to apologize for my deception, Mr. Pendragon,” he says. “As it has been particularly hard on you.”

“What are you—”

“I think he’s referring to me,” says a third voice.

Where Merlin whirls in disbelief, Arthur turns around very, very slowly. This feels too much like some sort of training exercise that could go bad at any moment.

Morgana is trying valiantly to smile.

“At least,” she says softly, “I hope he is.”

“You’re—” Arthur knows that he sounds an absolute wreck; when Merlin turns to him he clears his throat, but only words he can come up with are a helpless, “I don’t understand.”

And he truly doesn’t. His memory is rebelling furiously against his eyes— _I saw her, I all but saw her die—_

“Miss Faye has been working for me for some time now,” K says, coming to stand beside her. Gwen lingers on his other side, looking guilty, which Arthur focuses on like a cornered animal sensing weakness.

“Did you _know_ about this?”

Gwen actually wrings her hands. “No! Arthur, I swear—” She sounds wretched, too wretched to be lying. Arthur feels a bit sorry for her. “K told me he had someone else on the inside, but I had no idea it was your sister. I didn’t even know she was alive until last night.”

“Bloody old dragon,” Morgana sighs, exasperated. “You always have to make things too complicated by half.”

K looks like he might respond to that, but Arthur’s had enough.

“I want an explanation,” he grits out. “Now.”

Morgana takes a deep breath. “I faked my own death, Arthur. With K’s help.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Arthur snaps. “How? Why?”

“We’d planned on using the warhead beforehand. I hadn’t properly armed it yet, obviously, so it was just a basic missile, but I thought that would still be enough that everyone would assume I’d been killed. It was a neat way of getting rid of both warheads as well.”

“Which was our primary objective,” K puts in. “Neutralize the threat of both Agravaine duBois and his commissions.”

“I was off the boat the second the missile launched,” Morgana says. “I had scuba gear with me, and—well, you know me, Arthur. I’ve always been a strong swimmer.”

Arthur can’t do anything but stare, which makes it something of a relief when Merlin blurts out his own thoughts for him, sounding outraged.

“Are you mad? You realize how _ridiculously_ easy it would’ve been for that to go wrong?”

Morgana shrugs.

“That’s the risk you take in our line of work.”

Arthur rallies and tries to remember how words work. He’s still waiting to go into shock, to be quite honest, but in the meantime he might as well get as much clarification as he can.

“And what is your line of work, exactly? What have you been doing all this time?”

She actually looks guilty for a moment, before the confident persona takes over again. “K and I found each other not long after I left the agency. It turned out that our interests were aligned. We worked a few smaller jobs at first, but then we decided to go after Agravaine. I’ve been deep undercover for _years_ gaining his trust. Or at least something like it.” She folds her arms across her chest. “And then you two came bumbling in and nearly fucked everything up.”

Beside him, Merlin begins to flail. “But there was never any intel about a fiancée! No tabloid photos, let alone police surveillance—”

“I’m very discreet,” Morgana says sweetly. “And also very paranoid.”

She continues. “Once Agravaine got an idea into his head there was no stopping him. The man was as stubborn as a pig. When he started talking about Dr. Smithson’s particular talents I tried to steer him towards bribery, maybe some blackmail—” She shoots an apologetic glance at Gwen. “But then the idiot went and kidnapped him instead.”

Merlin coughs. “And you didn’t just off Agravaine at that point because…?”

Morgana narrows her eyes at him. “We aren’t assassins,” she says coolly. “I was trying to gather enough evidence to have Agravaine put away for life as a traitor and an arms dealer. One kidnapping charge would’ve been a slap on the wrist; his lawyers would have had him freed in hours.”

“Then how would you explain Dr. Smithson’s death?” Arthur cuts in. “An unfortunate oversight on your part?”

To his surprise, it’s Gwen who answers.

“My father is alive,” she says softly. “He’s already being relocated with a new name, and—and we’re working on finding my brother as well.”

“Bulletproof vest,” Morgana supplies. “I smuggled one to him just before I left for the boat.” She smirks. “My fiancé was a lousy shot. He would never think to aim for the head.”

Arthur is back to staring. It’s all he can manage, evidently. Merlin startles him by throwing up his hands.

“Is _anyone_ we thought was dead today actually dead?” he demands. “Would you like to pull the last Pope out of the ground too, you know, as long as we’re here?”

“Agravaine duBois is very much deceased,” K says with a touch of amusement. “I can assure you of that.”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Right. Well, at least that’s something.”

“Faking deaths is rather our specialty,” Morgana says.

“But you still haven’t explained why,” Arthur murmurs. They all look at him. “Why fake your own death in the first place? Why not just disappear with the missile and disarm it later?”

“Because it had to be perfect,” his sister says quietly. “Because now the only people who know I’m alive are standing on this roof.”

She shoots a sideways glance at K, who claps his hands together. “Miss Smithson, Mr. Emrys, if you’ll come this way I think you’ll find this rooftop has a noteworthy view of St. Peter’s Basilica…”

Gwen follows her handler. Merlin lingers.

 _Protective idiot_ , Arthur thinks with an entirely unprofessional twinge of fondness. He nods. “You might as well get a bit of sightseeing in while we’re still here,” he says. Merlin doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he goes, leaving Arthur and Morgana in relative privacy.

“You have to understand,” she says after a moment. “I left because I had to get away from the agency, the way—the way he ran things. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“You left without a word!” Arthur hisses, all the old anger and hurt bubbling up again. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything to me?”

“Because you loved him! You love our father, Arthur, even though you’ve seen what he can be.” She swallows hard. “There’s nothing left between Uther and me. I only know that I will _never_ be his tool again. I’ll die first.” Trying for a smile again, she adds, “Faking my death seemed preferable to that.”

Maybe a week ago he would have continued to argue—they used to fight for hours on end as teenagers, neither willing to admit that they could be wrong. But Arthur knows things now that he didn’t a week ago. And he finds he understands his sister better than he ever thought he could.

Maybe someday he’ll even agree.

“You know,” Morgana says when Arthur doesn’t say anything more, “K has been watching you both for a while now. He wants to expand our little group, given it’s just the three of us and his frankly ridiculous fortune at the moment.”

“Betray my own organization?” The words come out on automatic, but Morgana doesn’t get angry. She looks pointedly over his shoulder. Arthur follows her gaze.

Merlin is leaning so far over the edge of the roof that he’s likely to tip over it headfirst, no doubt squinting to see whatever landmark K has just pointed out. Gwen has her hand over her mouth and is clearly fighting not to laugh.

“Loyalty isn’t black and white,” Morgana says when Arthur turns back to her. “It’s complicated. I can guess what Uther told you to do, Arthur, but as both of you are still here…” She shrugs. “I’d wager you understand that better than you think.”

_Family is family._

Arthur has always known that much. What Uther never considered was the possibility of family extending beyond one’s own blood.

Abruptly exhausted, Arthur rubs his hand over his eyes.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he admits without meaning to.

Morgana looks surprised—and then, to his shock, she steps forward and pulls him into a hug. It’s brief and more than a little awkward, but it’s at least definitive proof that this isn’t some elaborate hallucination.

“Missed you too, little brother,” she says in his ear before pulling away. Her smile is shaky, but Arthur still finds himself smiling back.

They walk back towards the group. Arthur braces himself: His head may already be swimming from everything that’s been thrown at it today, but there’s still one more conversation he needs to have.

.

Merlin still can’t see whatever ancient carving K is going on about; he’s fairly sure he’s being had and Gwen is just playing along, but he goes with it until Gwen crosses to another corner of the roof to see if she can get a better view of the Vatican.

“You have something to say to me, Mr. Emrys?” K asks.

“You made him think his sister was dead,” Merlin says, more mildly than he feels. “Worse—you put him on the phone with her first. You made him think he had a hand in it.” And the look on Arthur’s face when he’d come to that conclusion is seared into Merlin’s memory, no matter how badly he might want it gone. “Arthur might not want to ask, now Morgana’s back, but I will.”

He turns to look K in the face. He wants to know if the old man is lying.

“Why? Why do that to him?”

K’s expression is impossible to read. The sunglasses aren’t helping. “You may not believe me, Mr. Emrys, but that last bit of theatre was at Miss Faye’s request,” he says. “She wished to see if Arthur had changed.”

“Changed how?”

“She told me today that the Arthur she knew would have cut her out of his heart completely once he was convinced she was a traitor. That he would have written her off as a lost cause. Certainly she didn’t seem to think he would jeopardize his own mission to warn her away from danger.”

“If she really thought that,” Merlin says hotly, “then she didn’t know him at all.”

K turns to peer at Merlin over the rim of his sunglasses. Merlin feels, bizarrely, like his mind is being read.

“Perhaps,” K says. “But perhaps she would like to.”

“Like to what?”

Merlin twitches. He hadn’t even heard Morgana and Arthur come back.

“Like to wear a bloody _bell_ ,” he grumbles. Morgana smiles at him in that way that reminds him of large jungle cats with very sharp teeth.

“I apologize for poisoning you and condemning you to a brief stay in Cedric’s dungeon,” she says. “But in my defense, I thought you were trying to infiltrate my operation. And you did drink my scotch without permission.”

Merlin stares before matching her smile for smile. “I could really learn to hate you,” he replies.

“Likewise,” she says cheerfully. Arthur looks appalled by them both, which Morgana ignores in favor of turning to K. “Come back downstairs? I wanted to discuss our next flight out; there’s a six-hour layover currently and I think I found an option that will cut that in half.”

“You’re leaving?” Arthur blurts. Morgana blinks, her smile softening into something far less dangerous.

“Not just yet, I promise. And certainly not on a flight that strands me for six hours in bloody Detroit. Gwen!”

Gwen reappears from the other side of the roof, looking elated. Merlin’s guessing she spotted that basilica after all.

“Yes?”

Morgana links their arms together. “I think you and I should make use of the minibar. It makes talking business so much less painful, and K here is absolutely no fun at all.”

“I rather thought my contribution was the ‘frankly ridiculous fortune’ I bring to our endeavors,” K says dryly, but he walks alongside them toward the rooftop door. Belatedly Merlin remembers his other question.

“And what are your endeavors, exactly?” he asks.

K turns back around with a tiny smile.

“Protecting people, Mr. Emrys,” he says. “First and foremost. From their own creations, if necessary.”

And then the three of them are gone, Morgana and Gwen animatedly discussing possible renovations that could be made to the former’s current car, and the door shuts behind them.

“Well,” Merlin says at last. “This has been an eventful day. Even for us.”

“It has at that,” Arthur replies.

“Are you all right?”

Arthur sighs. “I don’t think I’ve wrapped my head around any of it, to be honest. Ask me again tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Merlin repeats, blankly.

Arthur clears his throat. “Morgana mentioned something to me about a job opening. It seems K is trying to expand his forces beyond one spy and one mechanic.”

“Oh?” Merlin’s trying for casual, but he isn’t sure it’s working. “Did you give her an answer? If K has managed to keep Morgana off everyone’s radar for this long, then it stands to reason he could offer protection from…similarly irritable parties.”

Arthur looks thoughtful. “There’s something to be said for getting in on the ground floor of an organization,” he says. “I’ve been thinking—if you enter into one that’s already corrupt, then…what if, no matter how good your intentions, you’ll never be able to fix it from the inside? What if it was too late before you even got there?”

“No one can fault you for trying,” Merlin says softly, but Arthur shakes his head.

“There are lines that shouldn't be crossed. Like abandoning your own people to the wolves simply because of the things they do in private.”

Merlin would have expected to feel foreboding. Instead he just feels resigned. He turns to Arthur, bracing himself.

“You knew?”

“I figured it out,” Arthur says.

“ _When_?”

Arthur looks down, twisting his ring around his finger. “Cedric’s door had eighteen locks on the outside. Eighteen. It took…longer than I would’ve liked to pick them all.”

Merlin sighs. “So you heard.”

“I shouldn’t have had to hear it like that,” Arthur says calmly.

“What would’ve been the point?” Arthur is shaking his head again, but Merlin presses on. “It’s been two years, Arthur. And—and he’s your father. I wasn’t going to put you in that position.”

Arthur glares at him. “You don’t get to decide my loyalties for me, Merlin. You should have said something.”

“I just thought—especially with Morgana showing up—” Merlin lets out a noise of frustration. “I thought you had enough to be getting on with, all right? You won’t let me have your back any other way without turning into a prick, so I’m not going to apologize for this.”

He can see Arthur gearing up for a pretty spectacular row—but then, to Merlin’s disbelief, the fight seems to go right out of him.

“You’re such an idiot sometimes.” The words don’t even have a bite to them. “You’re so—everything else going on, and you’ve been worried about that.”

“Old habits die hard,” Merlin says.

Arthur looks at him. “You never said what you thought about K’s offer. Whether you wanted to take it.”

“Whether I—” Merlin frowns. “What are you really asking me, Arthur?”

“I’m _asking_ if you’re going to accept, or if you’re going to be a dunce as usual and wait for one of our agencies to use you for target practice.”

His heart trips a little. “You sure you’d be all right with that? Being saddled with a partner you can’t trust?”

“The offer was for both of us,” Arthur points out. “K seems to think we work better as a team.”

“But what do _you_ think?”

Arthur makes a huffing sound. It might be irritation, or it might be a laugh.

“Honestly? I don’t know.” His hesitation only lasts a second; Arthur’s always been one to barrel right through things. “But I think I’d like to try. Again. I think—I think I missed you.”

Merlin stares. Arthur is refusing to look at him; his ears are turning steadily red— _probably well on your way to sunburn, oblivious prat_ —and Merlin’s heart is pounding in his throat all of a sudden.

“Yeah,” he says at last. The word comes out sounding funny. “Me too—to both, I mean.”

Arthur lets out a breath, his mouth twitching. “Then we’re doing this?”

Merlin smiles. Feeling particularly daring—or particularly masochistic, there’s not much of a distinction in their line of work—he reaches over and takes Arthur’s hand. Arthur doesn’t shake him off.

“I think we’re going to try.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[FANART] Entirely Unprofessional](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7871518) by [Hyraeth (Qualyn)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qualyn/pseuds/Hyraeth)




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